Suspects raise profile of 'middle-class' radicals
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Stephen Fidler and Roula Khalaf
British security services and policymakers face a critical question over the three failed bomb attacks in Glasgow and London. If the main suspects came from outside the UK, were they radicalised overseas or in Britain?
Another concern will be that the suspects defy the stereotypical image of uneducated and underprivileged fanatics, instead coming from comfortable sections of society.
Eight people had been detained in a day. They were all born, apparently, in India or the Middle East and seven are members of the medical profession.
If they became extremists overseas and were planted in the UK as an al-Qaeda-linked "sleeper cell", a likely official response would be to tighten visa restrictions and heighten background checks for professional and academic immigrants.
But if they were radicalised after entering the UK, immigration checks would have failed to capture the group among the thousands of other doctors from the Middle East and India.
Security officials said that it was still not known whether the suspects were ever in the same place, or worked at the same hospital.
Some private sector terrorism specialists see signs that the group formed within the UK and had radicalised in the short time since arriving here: in many ways a more alarming conclusion for the authorities than the existence of a sleeper cell.
"The odds on recruitment and radicalisation in the UK are the highest in the world. That's an unfortunate fact," said Beverli Rhodes, a terrorism specialist at Capita Symonds, an infrastructure consultancy.
A sleeper cell, experts pointed out, would presumably have perfected better bomb-making techniques than those used in the failed attacks over the past week.
Regardless of where they were radicalised, their background appears to be decidedly middle-class.
Militants from comfortable backgrounds have dominated the upper echelons of the al-Qaeda network since its inception. Osama bin Laden hails from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia - the bin Laden group is one of the biggest contractors in the kingdom - and he is known to have earned a degree, perhaps in civil engineering, from the King Abdelaziz University in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
His number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, meanwhile, came from a professional, middle-class family and followed in his father's footsteps by studying pharmacology at the University of Cairo. Mr al-Zawahiri's predecessor as leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad organisation, Sayyed Imam al Sherif, is said to have been a surgeon. Mr al-Sherif now leads a campaign against violence. Meanwhile, Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian, and early leaders of the global jihadi movement killed in 1989, studied agriculture in college before turning to sharia law.
While recruitment of poor young men tends to happen in countries with widespread poverty, such as Algeria and Morocco, Saudis who have joined al-Qaeda cells - including the 9/11 bombers - have often come from more privileged families.
"The profile of a poor, destitute jihadi is not accurate," says Dia Rashwan, expert on Islamist groups at Cairo's al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies. "Notice how jihadis are good at IT - and how they set up websites."
Gavin Proudley, chief of intelligence at London-based Quest, a business consultancy, notes that many found guilty of terrorist acts have come from good academic backgrounds. "Often they are people with very promising futures who haven't particularly suffered or felt personally alienated but are affected by a broader sense of alienation," he says.
Under syndication arrangement with FE
British security services and policymakers face a critical question over the three failed bomb attacks in Glasgow and London. If the main suspects came from outside the UK, were they radicalised overseas or in Britain?
Another concern will be that the suspects defy the stereotypical image of uneducated and underprivileged fanatics, instead coming from comfortable sections of society.
Eight people had been detained in a day. They were all born, apparently, in India or the Middle East and seven are members of the medical profession.
If they became extremists overseas and were planted in the UK as an al-Qaeda-linked "sleeper cell", a likely official response would be to tighten visa restrictions and heighten background checks for professional and academic immigrants.
But if they were radicalised after entering the UK, immigration checks would have failed to capture the group among the thousands of other doctors from the Middle East and India.
Security officials said that it was still not known whether the suspects were ever in the same place, or worked at the same hospital.
Some private sector terrorism specialists see signs that the group formed within the UK and had radicalised in the short time since arriving here: in many ways a more alarming conclusion for the authorities than the existence of a sleeper cell.
"The odds on recruitment and radicalisation in the UK are the highest in the world. That's an unfortunate fact," said Beverli Rhodes, a terrorism specialist at Capita Symonds, an infrastructure consultancy.
A sleeper cell, experts pointed out, would presumably have perfected better bomb-making techniques than those used in the failed attacks over the past week.
Regardless of where they were radicalised, their background appears to be decidedly middle-class.
Militants from comfortable backgrounds have dominated the upper echelons of the al-Qaeda network since its inception. Osama bin Laden hails from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia - the bin Laden group is one of the biggest contractors in the kingdom - and he is known to have earned a degree, perhaps in civil engineering, from the King Abdelaziz University in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
His number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, meanwhile, came from a professional, middle-class family and followed in his father's footsteps by studying pharmacology at the University of Cairo. Mr al-Zawahiri's predecessor as leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad organisation, Sayyed Imam al Sherif, is said to have been a surgeon. Mr al-Sherif now leads a campaign against violence. Meanwhile, Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian, and early leaders of the global jihadi movement killed in 1989, studied agriculture in college before turning to sharia law.
While recruitment of poor young men tends to happen in countries with widespread poverty, such as Algeria and Morocco, Saudis who have joined al-Qaeda cells - including the 9/11 bombers - have often come from more privileged families.
"The profile of a poor, destitute jihadi is not accurate," says Dia Rashwan, expert on Islamist groups at Cairo's al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies. "Notice how jihadis are good at IT - and how they set up websites."
Gavin Proudley, chief of intelligence at London-based Quest, a business consultancy, notes that many found guilty of terrorist acts have come from good academic backgrounds. "Often they are people with very promising futures who haven't particularly suffered or felt personally alienated but are affected by a broader sense of alienation," he says.
Under syndication arrangement with FE