B. Raman eviscerates the British for their longstanding support of terrorism:
After Pakistan and Afghanistan, the UK has been traditionally for many years the largest sanctuary to foreign terrorists and extremists. Everybody, who is somebody in the world of terrorism, has found a rear base in the UK -- the Khalistanis in the past, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Mirpuris from PoK, the Chechens, the Al Muhajiroun, the Hizbut Tehrir etc. Having allowed such a medley of terrorists and extremists to operate unchecked from their territory for so long, British intelligence just does not have a correct estimate of how many sleeper cells are operating from their country and of which organisations.
"The intelligence agencies of the US and the UK went along with Zia's policy of Arabising/Wahabising the Muslims of Pakistan because this contributed to an increase in the flow of jihadis to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Till 1983, the members of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK were considered a largely law-abiding people. The first signs of the radicalisation of the Diaspora appeared in 1983 when a group of jihadi terrorists kidnapped Ravi Mhatre, an Indian diplomat posted in the Indian Assistant High Commission in Birmingham, and demanded the release of Maqbool Butt, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, who was then awaiting execution in Tihar jail in Delhi following his conviction on charges of murder. When India rejected their demand, the terrorists killed Mhatre and threw his body into one of the streets. This kidnapping and murder was allegedly orchestrated by Amanullah Khan, a Gilgiti from Pakistan. He was assisted by some Mirpuris. The British were uncooperative with India in the investigation and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India for investigation and prosecution. By closing their eyes to the terrorist activities of the Mirpuris from their territory, they encouraged the further radicalisation of the Diaspora.
"Just as the radicalisation of the Muslims of Pakistan suited the US-UK agenda in Afghanistan, the radicalisation of the Diaspora in the UK, particularly the Mirpuris, suited their agenda for balkanising Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many Pakistanis from the UK went to the training camps of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (now called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan and got themselves trained with the knowledge and complicity of the British. They then went to Bosnia and Kosovo to wage a jihad against the Serbs with arms and ammunition and explosives allegedly supplied by the Iranian intelligence with the tacit consent of the Bill Clinton administration and paid for by the Saudi intelligence. As the Pakistani prime minister between 1993 and 1996, Benazir Bhutto had visited these jihadis in the UK. After waging their jihad against the Serbs, they moved from the UK to Pakistan to join the HUA and the LeT and participate in the jihad against India.
"The most notable example of the home-grown UK jihadis who turned against them is Omar Sheikh. From Bosnia, he came to India to wage a jihad and was arrested by the Indian security forces. He was released following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by a group of Harkat-ul-Maujahideen terrorists. After his release, he went to Pakistan and orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. The second notable example is Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri, who went to Pakistan from the UK to join the Jaish-e-Mohammad after marrying a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Jaish amir. He was allegedly involved in the plot detected by the London police in August 2006 to blow up a number of US-bound planes. This plot was hatched by some members of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK. (Rauf was recently killed in a US Predator strike on an al Qaeda hide-out in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan).
