THE TURKISH Cypriot former right-hand man of Abu Hamza, the Muslim cleric jailed in the UK for seven years last February for inciting his followers to murder non-Christians, was among the 14 Muslims arrested last Friday for allegedly plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in the British capital, it has emerged.
Forty-two-year-old Atilla Ahmet, alias Abu Abdullah, is the head of an extremist Muslim group known as the Supporters of Sheriah that boasts around 3,000 supporters in the UK. Ahmet took over the group after Abu Hamza was jailed, and recently attracted attention to himself by saying he supported those who would use household chemical products to attack the West.
“The martyr that goes amongst his enemies is going to shield his people. He doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction, he only has household chemicals,” he was reported to have said in an open flouting Tony Blair’s anti-terrorist laws outlawing the “glorification of terrorists”.
Previously, he had described those who killed 52 people in the 7/7 London bombings as “my honourable brothers in Islam”, and declared publicly that he would “love to kill” British soldiers in Afghanistan. Ahmet also claims to love Osama Bin Laden more than he loves himself.
Ahmet was arrested along with thirteen others in a raid last Friday evening on a Chinese restaurant in south east London after what police say has been around nine months of investigation into the suspects. It was alleged that he and the others were involved in running a training camp at the Jameah Islameah Islamic School in Catt’s Hill, near Crowborough in Sussex. The school’s owners say they knew nothing about the activities of Ahmet and others in his group, and say that when Abu Hamza once visited the school they had asked him never to return because he and his followers had “acted strangely”.
The Home Office insists students at the school were being “groomed for terror”.
Although Ahmet was born into a Turkish Cypriot Muslim family, he has said in a number of interviews that he “converted” to Islam 12 years ago because Western philosophy had nothing to offer him.
“I was brought up as in some of Allah’s names. I thought I was a Muslim. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know how to pray. I didn’t know you had to pray,” he said in one recent interview.
Police who arrested Ahmet say he and his followers could have been planning to bomb targets such as Big Ben, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace, plus football matches of Arsenal and Chelsea. Earlier, Ahmet had said it was legitimate to attack and all those “who are fighting Islam. Tony Blair, the army, the police.” He also said President Bush was “a scalp that needs to be taken”.
