Britain’s Big Problem
Charles Johnson
Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 7:55 am PST • Views: 330
A network of terrorist training camps in rural Britain.
LONDON: Clad in mud-smeared combat fatigues, the young Muslim men trained in picturesque British farmland, hurling imaginary grenades, wielding sticks as mock rifles and chopping watermelons in simulated beheadings.
Tourists and others who stumbled across this sight — described by eyewitnesses in a London courtroom over recent weeks — struggled to stifle laughter.
But a four-year inquiry, which came to a close Tuesday with guilty pleas from the last two of seven gang members, has exposed a network of alleged British terrorism training camps with a serious intent to prepare recruits for mass murder.
Security officials believe hundreds of men — including a gang that made a failed attempt to bomb London’s transit network — passed through camps across the English countryside.
Investigators say their discovery exposes a worrying development at the heart of British homegrown terrorism: training camps once thought to be exclusive to northern Pakistan or Afghanistan are being run in sleepy rural England.
Frank says: