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Britain's intelligence services are investigating an Islamist website that says it is establishing a branch of al Qaeda in Britain, BBC television reported.
According to the report, security experts fear a posting on the site, www.alekhlaas.net, declaring "the creation of the al Qaeda organisation in Britain" may be genuine.
"You don't ignore this sort of thing," Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the British joint intelligence committee, told the programme.
"It may not be a threat from an existing cell ... but it does represent a move in the propaganda game."
Newsnight said there was no way of knowing how serious the declaration on the website was, although it mirrored the language used on other well-known militant sites that have carried declarations by al Qaeda and its affiliates in the past.
- REUTERS
