'British Taliban to attack UK'

A British man who says he recruited 200 Muslims to fight for the Taliban claimed today many are returning to launch atrocities in this country.

Hassan Butt, 22, who was brought up in Manchester, says leading politicians and government buildings will be targets.

Although moderate Muslims dismiss Butt as a publicity-seeking fanatic, he is well known in extremist circles and in the current nervous climate British security forces cannot dismiss his threats lightly.

Leader of the Islamic fundamentalist al-Muhajiroun group in Lahore, Pakistan, he claims that as well as 200 Britons he recruited 400 other Westerners to fight in Afghanistan.

Speaking from Pakistan, he told Radio 4's Today programme that the fall of the Taliban does not spell the end of the holy war against the West, and claimed a new phase is about to start in Britain. Of the Britons he recruited, some have been killed, some are in Pakistan launching al Qaeda operations and others are returning to the UK, he claimed.

Those returning here "should strike at the heart of the enemy, within Britain", he said. "And those from America should strike again in America."

The Wolverhampton University drop-out claims he has received many phone calls from Muslims keen to sign up, though al-Muhajiroun says it is not directly involved in recruiting.

Butt said British intelligence services were too "incompetent" to catch his sophisticated operators. He claims he visited Britain for three weeks last month and security services had no idea he was here, until a newspaper told them.

"Just because I have a British passport, it doesn't mean I should support the British Government," he said. "I have no loyalties to Britain at all and do not feel guilty one bit."

The Mirror claimed he wanted £100,000 to be interviewed - which he denies.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that an American teenager who killed himself by flying a stolen plane into a Florida skyscraper had written a note backing Osama bin Laden's terror campaign.

Police described Charles Bishop, 15, as a "troubled young man" and revealed they recovered a suicide note from his body expressing support for the 11 September terror attacks on the US.

The note, which also said he was acting alone, was found on the boy's body after it was recovered from the wreckage of the Cessna 172B, which hit the 28th floor of the 42-storey Bank of America building in Tampa on Saturday.

Shocked TV viewers watched footage of the tail of the Cessna hanging from the building in a scene that recalled the World Trade Center outrages. The Florida building was largely empty at the time of the crash, and noone else was injured. The slightly damaged skyscraper was open as normal today.

Bishop, who lived in Florida, had been taking flying lessons since March. He took off alone after being left to carry out pre-flight checks.

His fatal flight took him over MacDill air force base, command centre for the air war in Afghanistan. Two F15 fighters were scrambled from a base 200 miles away, but arrived after the crash.