UK agencies on the hunt for home-grown terror recruiter

By RAYMOND WHITAKER, PAUL LASHMAR AND KIM SENGUPTA in London

Britain's security agencies are hunting for a suspect known as "The Recruiter" who is enlisting young British Muslims for terror attacks.

He is thought to come from the ranks of British citizens with military training in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and may have fought in Afghanistan alongside al Qaeda or the Taleban.

The security services are concerned that an attack on British soil will be carried out by Islamist extremists who were born or grew up in Britain, recruited by someone from the same background.

Such a suspect is much harder to track down than foreign-born members of exile groups who have sought asylum in Britain or have entered the country illegally.

The new strategy parallels that of the Provisional IRA, which in later stages used "lilywhites" - British-born people of Irish descent, without overt links with republicanism - to carry out attacks on the mainland.

The problem of finding The Recruiter is compounded by uncertainty over the number of British Muslims who received training in camps either run by, or affiliated to, al Qaeda.

The figure was thought to be about 4000 shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, but that is now considered an overestimate. The real total, according to security sources, is between 600 and 800.

Although the vast majority of them returned to the UK without any further involvement in terrorist activities, several are suspected of acting as recruiting sergeants for al Qaeda and its associates.

Fear of a home-grown terror threat comes at a time of high international tension in the wake of the Madrid train bombings last month.

The Spanish authorities have named the radical Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as the main suspect in the Madrid bombings.

FBI and Homeland Security Department officials said that they had received uncorroborated intelligence about a plot by terrorists to target commercial transport systems.

- INDEPENDENT