Police tail Taliban's UK supporters

Special Branch is monitoring the activities of Islamic extremist suspects who may be recruited to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Detectives across London are drawing up a database of suspects mainly amid fears that they could be involved in instigating public disorder on the streets of Britain.

Police said they were getting reports of people travelling abroad to fight in Afghanistan. However one senior detective said: "It is nothing like the number of 1,000 which is being quoted today. It is more a handful here and there."

Sources at Scotland Yard said there was little police could do to prosecute extreme Islamic groups involved in recruiting people to fight abroad.

One said: "The difficulty we have is proving they are fighting for or as terrorists rather than fighting for a state or a government. We can also monitor them leaving the country, but how can we prove they are going somewhere like Afghanistan or Pakistan, and how can we say they are going there to fight?"

One British Muslim has been charged in connection with providing firearms and explosives training in Britain for use abroad.

Sulayman Zainul-Abidin, 43, an assistant chef at London's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Regent's Park, has been charged under Section 54 (1) of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Zain-ul-Abidin, of south-east London, is suspected of being involved in the Sakina Security firm, which allegedly advertised arms training to Muslim youths as "the ultimate jihad challenge".

Today the former Conservative Party chairman Lord Tebbit tabled a question in the House of Lords asking if British subjects were committing treason by taking up arms against the global alliance to fight terrorism, or against the Anglo-American forces in particular.

Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Squad are examining a number of groups who have boasted of recruiting people to fight overseas.

The fundamentalist Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed is leader of one such group, the hardline anti-Western al-Muhajiroun (The Emigrants). By his own admission, he has recruited hundreds of young Britons for "holy wars" in Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Its representatives in Pakistan claim 1,000 British Muslims have joined the Taliban.

And even though his group has now been banned from all university campuses amid concerns of a recruiting drive, Bakri and his closest followers have been busy staging meetings across the country in recent weeks.

From Manchester, Birmingham and Luton, to gatherings across London in Tottenham, Barking and Whitechapel, al-Muhajiroun has spread the message that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. Some moderate Muslims say Bakri is a "paper tiger" who does not represent a real threat, but one security source told the Evening Standard: "This is a group which is organising meetings on at least a weekly basis up and down the country. They may represent a tiny proportion of the Muslim population, but they have a significant number of sympathisers.

"Bakri may not personally represent a threat, but he creates a climate where it legitimises very hardline attitudes."

Born in Syria, he has lived in Britain since 1986, when he was deported from Saudi Arabia. He preaches holy war and has advocated chemical warfare against America and its allies. His group has not been banned, although many of its activities could arguably make it eligible for a place on the list of terror groups proscribed by the Government.

And police have been asked by the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether he should be charged for inciting racial hatred after remarks made during a BBC radio interview in the wake of the events of 11 September.

Al-Muhajiroun is also linked to Sakina Security, which allegedly teaches Muslim youths how to make explosive devices and offers courses on weaponry and close-quarter fighting.

Some of their alleged methods may seem absurd - one course run at a Sussex scout hut was said to put young men through their paces rolling around on the floor dodging mock gunfire. But the organisation is also said to have sent people to the USA to practice firing live rounds.