Met 'ignored warnings' of extremists

Claims that Scotland Yard repeatedly ignored warnings about Islamic extremists recruiting at London mosques were given fresh credence today.

Peter Herbert, deputy chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said allegations that the police failed to act to check extremists "may be correct".

He admitted: "With hindsight, many things that may have been looked at with more scrutiny after 11 September were not looked in such a way beforehand."

The frank assessment came as further information emerged about Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up a transatlantic flight on 22 December with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Reid, 28, also known as Abdel Rahim, has been identified as having attended al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. But it was in Brixton, that the petty criminal is believed to have become indoctrinated in extremism.

Abdul Haqq Baker, 35, the cleric who runs the south London mosque where Reid first went after converting to Islam while in prison for burglary, said he knew of "hundreds of Richard Reids" recruited in Britain.

And he claimed police had repeatedly ignored his warnings that recruiting agents preyed on his mosque. "We've told the police all we know about these individuals. We can't do much more than that."

He named radical figures such as Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza as having stepped up efforts to enlist new supporters at mosques, universities and community centres since 11 September.

Although Scotland Yard declined to comment, Mr Herbert admitted: "The police and other authorities have sometimes not known enough about who to listen to and certainly there are many moderate voices in the Islamic community which have been identifying causes of concern for a good number of years - both in the US and here."

But he cautioned that many people were not breaking the law in expressing extreme views. "You can have freedom of expression without breaking the law and you can go very far within that - we hear racist chants every week at football matches. We know the British National Party have organised and campaigned on a ticket of race hate and yet very few have ever been arrested," he said.

Reid, now in prison in the US, was said to be "amicable and affable" when he first joined the mosque in 1995, but by the time he left in 1998, he had begun to speak of a Holy War with the West, using the sort of rhetoric pedalled by the extremist group Al-Muhajiroun-which has claimed to have recruited more than 1,000 British Muslims for holy wars from Chechnya to Afghanistan.

Mr Baker said Reid was an unlikely terrorist and was more probably being used as a guinea pig to see if the chosen method of attack worked. "He was not one to instigate such a crime. The way he did this shows his gullibility. I believe he was sent as a tester. "

Israeli security services are investigating reports that Reid visited the country in June, claiming he was a Sri Lankan resident, and then travelled overland to Egypt. He is said to have aroused suspicion but to have been allowed to enter.

Meanwhile, claims by a leading Muslim moderate that hundreds of rogue Islamic schools are indoctrinating young children with dangerous religious extremism have been greeted with scepticism today by Muslim educationalists.

The claims came from Dr Zaki Badawi, principal of the Muslim College and a leading moderate Muslim figure in Britain, who demanded Government action to close up to 300 after-hours and weekend schools - the Islamic equivalent of Sunday schools - run by militant groups.

They operated beyond the control of local mosques, Dr Badawi said, teaching young children a narrow religious curriculum and fostering hatred and extremism.

But the existence of hundreds of "rogue" schools was doubted today by Ibrahim Hewitt, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Schools.

"Every mosque without exception has its madrassa where children go to learn about the Koran, in the evenings and at weekends, from the age of five," he said.

"But the control of these schools is very jealously guarded by the imams at the mosques. Teaching about the Koran is what they regard as their main function.

"Most of these so-called militant groups don't have control over the mosques to be able to take over such schools."

Doubts over bin Laden tape
Shoe bomber 'recognised from al Qaeda camps'
US cheerleaders fly in for New Year