Islamic fanatic who dubbed himself

'Osama Bin London' and brainwashed

21/7 bombers found guilty of running
terror training camps
By CHARLOTTE GILL - 27th February 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=518968&in
_page_id=1770

A Muslim fanatic who called himself Osama Bin London has been found guilty of
brainwashing the 21/7 terror plotters into becoming suicide bombers.

Mohammed Hamid, a former crack addict and thief, radicalised countless young men by
preaching hate and taking them on terror training camps in the countryside.

Undercover footage shows recruits using sticks as weapons and running through the New
Forest.

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War games: A shot from the BBC documentary Don't Panic: I'm Islamic, at a paintball
centre in 2005, in which Hamid featured

Hamid boasted that he ran the camps where he taught recruits military warfare for 13
years.
His conviction at Woolwich Crown Court, South London, goes some way to explain how
so many men, often born and raised here, have become terrorists.

On one camp, after the 7/7 bombings on the Tube and a bus in London in 2005, Hamid
scoffed at the death toll of 52, saying: "That's not even breakfast for me."

The prayer meetings and courses he ran with British-born Atilla Ahmet, a former
henchman of Abu Hamza, were the start of a conveyor belt for pupils which ended in
training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There, students would be radicalised further by Al Qaeda.

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Terror teacher: Fanatic Mohammed Hamid

Some would be sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others, such as Hamid's protege
Muktar Ibrahim, the ringleader of the failed bomb plot of July 21, 2005, would be posted
back to the UK to plot attacks here.

Ibrahim and fellow bombers Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohamed and Hussain Osman, first
came to the police's attention on a camp which Hamid was leading in the Lake District in
May 2004, 14 months before their failed attacks on the Tube.

In October 2004, Ibrahim and Hamid, a married father-of-six, were arrested for public
order offences in Oxford Street, London.
Hamid told officers: "I've got a bomb - I'm going to blow you all up."

He gave his name as Osama Bin London and his address as Tora Bora.

Ibrahim was allowed bail and flew to Pakistan, even though he aroused the suspicions of
Special Branch at Heathrow.

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Leader: Hamid ran an Al Qaeda-style cell and took his followers on training trips

He and two companions had survival gear, £5,200 in cash and a manual on treating
ballistic injuries.

Yet an officer believed their story that they were going to a wedding. It is thought that
this enabled him to go to an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, where he is suspected of
plotting the 21/7 bombings.

In 2005, four days before the 7/7 bombings, Hamid took a group including the 21/7
bombers Mohamed and Osman, on a paintballing trip in Bidborough, Kent.

After 21/7, Hamid's name kept coming up in police inquiries and he was interviewed as a
witness.

In September 2005, security services put his council house in Clapton, East London,
under surveillance, recording his anti-Western rants.
Hamid teamed up with Atilla Ahmet, described as 'the number one Al Qaeda operator in
Europe'

Hamid invited Ahmet, 43, to address his proteges. Ahmet, a father of four, of Bromley,
Kent, wanted to be a suicide bomber.

In one interview with CNN he said that Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, was "fair
game" for a terrorist attack and that 9/11 was a "deserved punch on the nose" for the U.S.

The scale of the men's fundamentalism was exposed after an undercover officer from
Scotland Yard infiltrated their inner circle.

Police realised Hamid, 50, who came to the UK when he was five, was luring passers-by
at his stall in Oxford Street, from where he sold extremist Islamic literature.

The officer, known only as Dawood at the trial, posing as a disaffected young man, went
to Hamid's stall in April 2006, and was taken under his wing.

Wearing hidden recording equipment, he spent five months taping Hamid and Ahmet at
camps in the New Forest, Berkshire and Sussex.

With Dawood's vital evidence, officers were able to swoop in September 2006, as Hamid
and Ahmet held a meeting at a restaurant, in Borough, South London.

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Hamid took a group, including 21/7 bombers Mohamed and Osman, on a paintballing trip
to a centre in Bidborough, Kent

Hamid was found guilty of six offences including soliciting to murder and providing
terrorist and weapons training. He was cleared on four other charges.
Ahmet had already pleaded guilty to soliciting to murder. They will be sentenced next
month.

Five other men were found guilty of various terror offences and jailed.