Grandstanding on Channel 4, London maniac just a year ago
HIS is the authentic voice of the 21st- century Islamist terrorist: devout, tech savvy and misleadingly banal. ‘Anyone got a smartphone?’ Khuram Shazad Butt asks in a Cockney Asian accent as he is filmed in Regent’s Park, Central London in July 2015.
Dressed in an Arabic djellaba — a long robe — Butt is about to pray before the black flag of the Islamic State in the company of eight similarly clad associates, as startled picnickers look on.
First, though, they need to use a compass app to tell them the direction of the holy city of Mecca.
The incongruous moment was captured by last year’s fly-on-the-wall documentary The Jihadis Next Door. It is a portrayal of home-grown radicalisation, made all the more chilling in hindsight.
The Pakistani-born Butt is a peripheral figure in the Channel 4 film, which focuses on the outlandish rhetoric and hypocrisy of a small cadre of British-based Islamists.
Often the participants seem absurd rather than dangerous. Reviewing the film at the time in the Mail, I wrote: ‘Much of what we see of [their] “jihad” is ludicrous and self- regarding. They are fire and brimstone publicity junkies who preach and posture on YouTube and street corners about the wicked kuffar State — while gladly drawing on that state’s largesse through housing and other benefits.’
In fact, the film has proven to be a tragically unheeded warning of the potential of such individuals to do real evil on their own doorsteps — and the part that social media plays in their wickedness.
This was brought home yesterday when images of a dead or dying Butt — clad in an Arsenal football shirt and fake suicide vest — flashed around the world.
He was one of the three jihadists shot by police officers near Borough Market on Saturday night after their van and knife rampage across the River Thames killed seven and injured dozens of others.
The 27- year- old father of two from Barking became the second of the homegrown fanatics in The Jihadis Next Door to turn killer in the name of Islam.
THE most pressing question now is how many others in the group are still at large. Why were they not picked up or controlled earlier, and what can be done about the preachers and provocateurs who encouraged them to mass murder?
Filming of The Jihadis Next Door took place between January 2014 and early 2016. The three central characters are all street or YouTube preachers. They had been influenced in turn by the so-called ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’, the Syrianborn radical Omar Bakri Muhammad, now imprisoned in Lebanon, and his British associate Anjem Choudary, who was jailed at the Old Bailey last year for Islamic Staterelated terror offences.
The group leader is one Abu Haleema, a heavily bearded sometime bus driver fromm Kilburn who is seen rehearsing his rants for YouTube. He is asked by the filmmaker Jamie Roberts about Islamic State, and replies with a coy dissembling which soon becomes familiar: ‘For the record, I don’t support the Islamic State . . . or I’ll get nicked.’
Haleema reveals his passport has been confiscated to prevent him leaving for Syria. He says the then Home Secretary Theresa May could solve extremism in the UK simply by giving jihadists their passports back. ‘Let us leave and there won’t be a single extremist left in this country.’
An alternative, he argues, is to give over the UK to Sharia law. Haleema suggests stonings to death for adultery could be carried out on Ealing Green in West London. Tall buildings from which homosexuals could be thrown would also be identified along the nearby Broadway. He admits he had been in social media contact with a Lancashire schoolboy who was jailed for life for plotting via the internet with a man in Melbourne to behead Australian police officers.
During the filming of the Channel 4 documentary, Haleema is arresteda and bailed for other suspectedsu terrorism offences and bannedb from using social media. His electronic devices are also confiscated. He simply takes his message to the streets instead.
‘The chickens have come home to roost,’ says Haleema of the Paris attacks in 2015 which killed 130 people. ‘They’ve brought it upon themselves . . . this is what happens in war.’
Isn’t he part of the problem, he is asked. He admits the aim of his internet sermons is to ‘radicalise and brainwash people’ into accepting a certain kind of Islam. But violent radicalisation is not his fault, he says. And if Islamic State was following a similar path it is ‘just a coincidence’.
Haleema is seen handing out Islamist leaflets in the company of one Abdul Adheem, a white convert and former DJ. But his closest comrade, friend and spokesman is Mohammed Shamsuddin. At one point in the film he and Haleema are seen eating a takeaway while watching a video of an Islamic State execution. On camera, Haleema says the murder is a ‘deterrent’, while Shamsuddin laughs and exclaims ‘wow!’ and ‘the guy is foaming at the mouth!’.
Shamsuddin was radicalised at university by a meeting with the hate preacher Omar Bakri. He claims to have suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome since the age of 18 and so lives on state benefits. There is nothing fatigued about his fervour.
‘ Our message is deadly,’ he freely admits. ‘ We are calling for world domination.’
He was thrown out of the Old Bailey in 2010 for a noisy protest after a ‘Muslim sister’, Roshonara Choudhry, was jailed for life for the attempted murder of MP Stephen Timms with a knife.
In another protest outside a magistrates court in August 2015, he declares before the camera: ‘One day Islam will be dominant and the black flag of Islam will one day be over Downing Street.’
It is Shamsuddin who leads the prayers in Regent’s Park which are attended by the London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt. A member of the public calls the police to report their possession of the jihadi black flag. The group, which includes Haleema, is intercepted by two officers as they leave.
One constable tells them they must be searched under terrorism legislation. The group reacts aggressively. Butt, now wearing black sunglasses, demands to know why the officer is touching Shamsuddin (he is not).
ACUTELY aware of the camera being present, Shamsuddin begins to grandstand. He shouts into the face of the officer telling him that he is a ‘liar’. He asks what section of terror legislation he is acting under, adding: ‘ We’re not stupid. We know the law.’
Indeed they do know the law — and how to push it to the limits in a democracy. And then beyond when the time comes.
Formerly of London, Haleema’s online activity appears to have cooled since he moved to the East Midlands last summer.
His last known address, just yards from a primary school, was last night boarded up. Neighbours said Haleema was escorted from the terraced property in a marked police car last week, and has not been seen since.
The film opens with a third important figure in the group. He calls himself Abu Rumaysah. The father of four is a Muslim convert from Hinduism, and was brought up in North London. He rents out bouncy castles for children’s parties.
Rumaysah shows the camera the black flag inside his lock-up garage and holds up a sign which reads ‘Democracy equals hypocrisy’.
He is coldly matter of fact about the possibility of atrocities on our streets. Britain is ‘at war’ against Islam, he explains to camera. The public was ‘indifferent’. If they didn’t address the situation they should ‘expect more carnage’.
Arrested during the course of filming, Rumaysah jumps bail and with his wife and children flees to Syria and the Islamic State.
Just before the documentary was aired last year, it was said Rumaysah had become an Islamic State executioner — ‘Jihadi John 2’.
In a film released on the internet by the terror group, a masked man is seen shooting dead one of five alleged British spies who are all killed on film. Shortly afterwards, Shamsuddin sends a link to the video to the maker of The Jihadis Next Door, along with the message: ‘You may know the voice.’
Shamsuddin refuses to condemn his ‘brother’. He says of Rumaysah: ‘I think he is from the best of the best, of the best [of Muslims].’
Pressed on his friend’s activities with Islamic State, Shamsuddin says no more as he fears arrest, ‘because there is no free speech in the UK.’
Events have proven that there has been too much freedom for people like him. And they have not been taken seriously enough. The jihadis ‘next door’ pose a real and present danger to us all.