A "Jihad Training Camp" in Britain

Sat, Sep 2, 2006 at 6:19:54 pm PDT

An ominous development in the latest British jihad plot: Police swoop on Britain’s first ‘jihad training camp’.

Anti-terror police raided what is believed to be Britain’s first home-grown jihad training camp in the grounds of a former English ballet school.

They rounded up a network of alleged terrorist recruiters after spying on them at the secluded country mansion. It is understood the group, which included several recent converts to Islam, were being schooled in fundamentalist ideals associated with Al Qaeda.

Last night, 14 men were being questioned, including at least one man described as a ‘high-profile fundamentalist Muslim cleric’.

Months of painstaking surveillance by MI5 culminated in police swooping on a group of 12 men as they sat down to a £4.99 ‘all-you-can-eat’ halal buffet in The Bridge To China Town restaurant in Borough, South London, late on Friday night, after they returned from a trip to the Islamic school.

It was followed by a series of raids at addresses across the capital and a massive police and forensic operation targeting the building and grounds of the Islamic school in East Sussex where they had been staying.

UPDATE at 9/2/06 6:57:25 pm:

Dan Riehl has more on Jameah Islameah, the Islamic school linked to Abu Hamza.