Radical sheikh makes his return
ynetnews ^ | 15 February 2006 | Yaakov Lappin
Extremist Islamist leader Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, banned from Britain after encouraging young Muslims to become suicide bombers, has broken his radio silence and reestablished contact directly with his UK followers from his new home in Beirut, Lebanon.
Six months before the July 7, 2005 London bomb attacks, Syrian-born Bakri told followers on an Internet chat room to join al-Qaeda, and instructed his listeners to commit acts of terrorism "wherever you are," citing the end of a "covenant of security" with Britain.
On February 13 and 14 of this year, Bakri returned to the same chat room. "The covenant (of security) has been restored," Bakri said on Tuesday evening, February 14. "Now tomorrow, there could be a change of the situation of the reality in Britain and you can do the jihad physically. It's not something rigid. The situation keeps changing," he warned.
Bakri said British Muslims should refrain from carrying out terror attacks on Britain, due to the British government's decision not to implement a number of anti-terror laws, but made it clear the 'ceasefire' was very fragile.
"I can see nowadays, they (the UK government) back down on a lot of things, and they are really giving a sense of security to the Muslim community in Britain. But now, if tomorrow (the British government) issues another new law, if they start to arrest you, and start to attack Muslims, this immediately is another situation," he said.
Bakri also called for Danish cartoonists who drew images of Islam's prophet Muhammad to be killed. |
