A publishing house based in London, United Kingdom, Azzam Publications has been accused by the authorities of being "part of a conspiracy to provide material support and communications links to people engaged in terrorism" by authorities. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
After the death of Abdullah Azzam, the publishers formed a group with the intent of publishing and spreading his militant ideology and related paramilitary manuals through print and Internet media.
The publishing house operated from a London post office box (Azzam Publications — BMC UHUD, LONDON, WC1N 3XX) and an Internet site, www.azzam.com, that was shut down shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Babar Ahmad, the administrator of Azzam Publications, was extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States. In December 2013, he pleaded guilty to "conspiracy and providing material to support to terrorism" in a New Haven, Connecticut court. [7]
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, , commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", was a blind Egyptian Islamist militant who served a life sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Butner near Butner, North Carolina, United States. Formerly a resident of New York City, Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1995. His prosecution grew out of investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, or simply Abu Hamza, is an Egyptian cleric who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, England, where he preached Islamic fundamentalist views.
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam was a Palestinian Islamic scholar and jihadist. Belonging to the Salafi movement, during the Soviet–Afghan War of the 1980s, he advocated defensive jihad by Muslims worldwide to help the Afghan mujahideen fight against the Soviet forces and Afghan Government forces in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Michel Chossudovsky is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website globalresearch.ca, founded in 2001, which publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Chossudovsky has promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11.
Gary McKinnon is a Scottish systems administrator and hacker who was accused in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time", although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. On 16 October 2012, after a series of legal proceedings in Britain, then Home Secretary Theresa May blocked extradition to the United States.
Haroon Rashid Aswat is a British terrorist who has been linked to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London. American officials allege that he has ties to al Qaeda, and have sought his extradition to the United States, which is supported by the British government. After his internment in Broadmoor Hospital in 2008, in 2010 the European Court of Human Rights blocked efforts to extradite Aswat due to concerns over the conditions of his potential imprisonment in the United States. This decision was upheld on 11 September 2013, meaning that he can not be extradited while under treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.
The Territorial Support Group (TSG) is a Met Operations unit of London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) which specialises in public order policing, amongst other specialist areas. In 2012 it consisted of 793 officers and 29 support staff. The TSG is a uniformed unit of the MPS that replaced the similarly constituted Special Patrol Group in 1987. TSG units patrol the streets of London in marked police vans or "carriers"; using the call sign prefix "Uniform". Generally each carrier has an advanced (police) driver, seven constables and a sergeant. Territorial Support Groups often comprise three carriers, twenty one constables, and three sergeants reporting to an Inspector. They separately patrol designated areas experiencing serious levels of gang violence or disorder. When deployed, it is by the MPS Information Room. Due to the public order nature of their role often numerous carriers will be assigned. TSG officers can be identified as TSG from the distinctive "U" in their shoulder numbers. Some TSG officers are also plainclothes officers, carrying a taser and handcuffs.
The Terrorism Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received royal assent on 30 March 2006, after being introduced on 12 October 2005. The Act creates new offences related to terrorism, and amends existing ones. The Act was drafted in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, and some of its terms have proven to be highly controversial. The government considered the act a necessary response to an unparalleled terrorist threat; it has encountered opposition from those who feel that it is an undue imposition on civil liberties, and could increase the terrorism risk.
The UK–US extradition treaty of 2003 was implemented by the UK in the Extradition Act 2003 and came into force in April 2007 following its ratification by the US Senate in 2006.
Younes Tsouli is a Moroccan-born resident of the United Kingdom who, in 2007, was found guilty of incitement to commit acts of terrorism and sentenced to 16 years in prison. His crimes were carried out via the internet, where he was known by several pseudonyms based on variations of Irhabi 007; "Irhabi" being the Arabic word for "terrorist", and "007" a reference to the fictional British secret agent, James Bond.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is a Pakistani Islamist who co-founded Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based Islamist militant organization that is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and Russia. He is listed on India's NIA Most Wanted. In April 2012, the United States placed a bounty of US$10 million on Saeed for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 civilians. While India officially supported the American move, there were protests against it in Pakistan.
The Wood Green ricin plot was an alleged bioterrorism plot to attack the London Underground with ricin poison. The Metropolitan Police Service arrested six suspects on 5 January 2003, with one more arrested two days later.
Adel Mohammed Abdel Magid Abdel Bari is an Egyptian terrorist.
Babar Ahmad is a British Muslim of Pakistani descent who spent eight years in prison without trial in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2012 fighting extradition to the United States. The US accused him of providing material support to terrorism via a website that he set up in the UK in 1996 to publish stories about the conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, but which in 2000–2001 allowed two articles to be posted on the site offering support to the then Taliban government in Afghanistan. The US accepted that the website was operated from the UK but claimed jurisdiction because one of the servers hosting the website was located in the US. He fought a public eight-year legal battle, from prison, to be tried in Britain but the British Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute" him.
Syed Fahad Hashmi is a Pakistani American and U.S. citizen. He was arrested in London, England on June 6, 2006 based on an indictment from the United States charging him with conspiracy to provide material support to Al-Qaeda. On April 27, 2010, Hashmi pleaded guilty to one count in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison. Hashmi was being held at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He was released July 19, 2019.
Terrorism in the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office, poses a significant threat to the state. There have been various causes of terrorism in the UK. Before the 2000s, most attacks were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the late 20th century there were also attacks by Islamic terrorist groups. Since 1970, there have been at least 3,395 terrorist-related deaths in the UK, the highest in western Europe. The vast majority of the deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and happened in Northern Ireland. In mainland Great Britain, there were 430 terrorist-related deaths between 1971 and 2001. Of these, 125 deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, and 305 deaths were linked to other causes, including 270 in the Lockerbie bombing. Since 2001, there have been almost 100 terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain.
Captain Tahawwur Hussain Rana is a Pakistani former military doctor who served in the Pakistan Army. He moved to Canada after gaining citizenship and became an immigration service businessman.
Syed Talha Ahsan is a British poet and translator. He is winner of the Platinum and Bronze Koestler Awards 2012 for his poetry.