LONDON - A Web site offering young Muslims the chance to learn all about explosives and the "art of bone breaking" was shut down this week under a new British crackdown on Islamic extremists.
Police sources told Reuters on Thursday that the closure of the London-based Sakina Securities Web site (www.sakina.fsbusiness.co.uk) followed the arrest on Monday of one of its instructors on terrorism charges.
The 43-year-old alleged Sakina instructor -- police refuse to name him – is one of two men being held on terrorism charges in Britain as it tightens the net on militants.
Britain's clampdown follows the September 11 hijack attacks on the United States. Some of the 19 alleged hijackers are said to have passed through Britain in the months before the attacks.
Sakina, which bills itself as an international security firm, claims to have sent fighters to Afghanistan and Chechnya.
The Web site said Sakina "prides itself on high-risk jobs in the former Soviet Union and in the civil war arenas of the world" and prepared Muslims to "defend themselves" by training them in self-defence and outdoor survival strategies.
"Islam is not an aggressive belief but we have the right and the obligation to defend ourselves," founder Mohammed Jameel told Reuters in 1999. "We are not going to escalate violence because we're restricted in what we do by Islamic law."
Virtual violence was another matter.
Describing its course as the "ultimate jihad experience," the site offered participants the chance to shoot off 3,000 live rounds at a U.S. firing range, "improvise explosive devices" or learn all about bone crushing.
Jameel was not available for comment on Thursday. No one answered the phone at Sakina's London office.
CRACKDOWN
The shutdown is the latest sign of a clampdown on militancy in Britain, long criticised as a haven for Islamic extremists.
Along with the Sakina instructor, police have detained Algerian pilot Lotfi Raissi, who is accused by the FBI of teaching the hijackers to fly the planes which crashed into U.S. landmarks last month.
Raissi, due to appear in a London court on Friday, is expected to be questioned soon by FBI agents in Britain.
Another Algerian, arrested in central England in connection with planned terror attacks in France and Belgium, was extradited to France last week.
All those arrested were charged under new anti-terrorism laws that came into effect in February, making it an offence to incite anyone to commit an act of terrorism, including murder, or to support anyone who committed a terrorism act.
A suspect in an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris told French investigators he recruited several militants at British mosques.
Britain has stepped up its monitoring of the activities of outspoken self-styled Islamic clerics like Syrian-born Sheikh Omar Barki Mohammed who issued a fatwa, or religious edict, ordering the death of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf has supported the United States in its campaign to force Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to hand over Osama bin Laden, Washington's prime suspect in last month's attacks.
07:56 10-04-01
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