Funding HateSome of the plotters in the
airplane bombing campaign turn out to have been students. Worse, the universities they attended have been funding their extremist hatred:
Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services.
Prof Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security studies, criticised university authorities for ignoring the threat to national security in their midst. "Institutions have not sought to address the problem: they have instead sought to undermine those who have raised the issue," he told this newspaper.
Extremist Muslim groups had been detected at more than 20 institutions, both former polytechnics and long-established universities, over the past 15 years, Prof Glees said.Meanwhile, the authorities are now
following the money trail.
The record of financial transactions, along with telephone and computer records, may help investigators trace more people in the alleged plot.
"Think of it as a river — you look upstream to find the source, and downstream to find out where the money is going," said Cliff Knuckey, former chief money laundering investigator for Scotland Yard.
American authorities were looking for any U.S. links in the conspiracy. Hundreds of FBI agents checked possible leads the past few weeks, including what two U.S. counterterrorism officials said, on condition of anonymity, were calls the British suspects placed to several U.S. cities.But this part is a head-scratcher:
There were signs preparations stepped up recently. One of the houses raided by British police this week had been bought last month by two men in an all-cash deal, in a neighborhood of $300,000 houses, neighbors reported.Why would suicide jihadis purchase a house?
