Muslim extremist arrested

ANTI-terror police are today questioning a man who has claimed to have recruited hundreds of British Muslims to fight for al-Qaeda.

Hassan Butt was arrested at Manchester Airport yesterday, where he was reportedly waiting for a flight to Lahore, Pakistan.
A police spokesman said: "Greater Manchester Police's Counter Terrorism Unit arrested one person under the Terrorism Act on the afternoon of Friday May 9.

"Officers are currently searching three addresses with warrants under the Terrorism Act.
"No armed officers were involved in the arrest."
Manchester-born Butt has spoken widely through the media about his past involvement with terrorist activity, which he says he has now renounced.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight last month, he said: "I started realising it's not as black and white - how could I justify killing these people because these people are living amongst us."

He was a former spokesman of now banned extremist group Al Mouhajiroun.

Al-Muhajiroun

leader: Self-styled Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed

Membership: Refused to reveal numbers

One of the largest Islamist parties in Britain. The organisation is banned from campuses of many British universities which it uses as a fertile recruiting ground.
Formed after a breakaway from Hizb ut-Tahrir, Al-Muhajiroun ("The Emigrants") has one purpose, establishing the Islamic state. Its members are regularly seen with loudhailers exhorting mainstream Muslims and non-believers to embrace their particular brand of fundamentalism, which calls for those practising homosexuality, adultery, fornication and bestiality to be stoned to death.

It now denies that it recruits for jihad but it boasted of this before September 11. Bakri Mohammed said of the al-Qaida attacks on the US embassies in Dar-as-Salaam and Nairobi: "We would not carry out terrorist activity ourselves, but we endorse the use of violence. Bin Laden is a hero to all Muslims." He adds: "I want Britain to become an Islamic state. I want to see the flag of Islam raised in 10 Downing Street."