(Wall Street Journal Europe) Douglas Murray - Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the fourth former head of a British university Islamic Society to be charged with a serious terrorism offense. Just before Christmas, the al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki was the subject of an airstrike on his Yemen home that killed many al-Qaeda operatives. Only last April, my organization [London's Center for Social Cohesion] was trying to explain to London's City University why he was not a suitable person to address, by video-link, their Islamic Society. Despite already having been known to be spiritual mentor to two of the 9/11 hijackers, he has been advertised as the "distinguished guest" speaker at the UK's Federation of Student Islamic Societies' annual dinner in 2003, and at Westminster University in 2006. Awlaki is now thought to be the connection between Abdumutallab and the people who gave him the bomb with which he intended to bring down the Detroit flight. It was a graduate of the London School of Economics who kidnapped and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. It was two undergraduates from Kings College London who carried out a suicide bombing in a bar in Tel Aviv the following year.
2010-01-18 08:10:04Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive