Counterterrorism Blog

The trial of Mohammed Hamid one of the leading organizers of terrorism in the UK has ended. Hamid along with three of his followers has been convicted using new legislation introduced in 2006, which criminalizes attendance at a place used for terrorist training. There was no evidence presented in this trial of weapons or explosives, simply the covert video tape of Mohammed Hamid and his followers performing what was described as ‘military training’, over a two-year period. The police investigation (Operation Overamp) relied on skilled technical surveillance and the undoubted bravery of an undercover officer. Hamid was found guilty of organizing terrorist camps and encouraging others to murder non-believers. The men later convicted of the failed July 21 attacks on London’s transport system were among those who attended his camps.

Hamid’s terrorist career is highly illustrative of the radical conditions that existed within the UK in the late 1990s and beyond. Hamid was born in Tanzania to an Indian family and grew up in Yorkshire in the north of England. He move to London when he was 12 getting involved in petty crime before being jailed for robbery. Following a period as a crack addict he turned to Islam. By the mid-90s he had opened his own bookshop in east London and was leafleting passers-by in central London. He was an occasional member of Abu Hamza’s congregation at Finsbury Park mosque, while also preaching extremist rhetoric at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park. When the war started with Afghanistan he organized aid shipments to Pakistan and returned to the UK further radicalized. He developed a long list of contacts and his innovation was to create training camps for terrorism within the UK. Hamid’s career-path seems all too familiar now.

Hamid was clearly a key radicalizing influence within the UK, one of many that have existed from the mid-1990s. What this prosecution shows, more than anything, is that the UK has arrived at a legislative and operational framework, within which to finally address these key recruiting and radicalizing influences. This was previously not possible, one only needs to look as far as the mangled attempts to prosecute Abu Hamza over the years. Sadly, extremists are likely to learn from this trial and reject future attempts to ‘train’ in the UK -- it is of course much harder to monitor training camps in Pakistan. The prevention of terrorism is a clear strand in Britain's counter-terrorism strategy (known as CONTEST) and this conviction is a significant victory. To continue achieving preventative success, the legal and operational responses will need to remain fluid in order to address variable future versions of, ‘terror recruiters’.