Bin Laden Bomb Video Circulating in the UK

October 5, 2003
Jason Burke, chief reporter
The Observer

A chilling video featuring advice on how to make bombs and calls to holy war from Osama bin Laden is circulating among radical British Muslims.

The video, which has been viewed by The Observer, includes a 20-second sequence during which a masked man shows how a detonator can be wired together. The man then gives instructions in Arabic on the construction of a bomb. The next sequence shows an exploding bomb in a building, apparently somewhere in Afghanistan, and footage of masked militants in what seems to be an al-Qaeda training camp.

The bomb-making pictures have been taken from a second video, also circulating in Britain, which features demonstrations of terrorist and military techniques.

The existence of the videos, which are thought to have been made and copied in the UK, will worry security services. Senior policemen said they were more concerned about the threat posed by a 'home-grown' militant than that from a terrorist from abroad.

'We are relatively confident that we are on top of any foreigners who want to come here and attack us. The problem is how do we spot the locals who get sucked into radical militancy,' one said. Richard Reid, the so-called 'shoe bomber', is the best-known of a series of British citizens to become involved with terrorism. Earlier this year two British nationals were killed in Israel after travelling there to commit suicide bomb attacks.

Both the Prime Minister and Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Britain's most senior officer, have said that a terrorist attack is 'inevitable'.

The existence of the video will raise fears that radical Muslim ideologies, though still limited to a tiny minority of Britain's Muslim population, are gaining strength. In much of the Islamic world the invasion of Iraq has increased support for extremists and it is feared that it may have radicalised Muslims in the UK too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1056478,00.html