I set up terrorists’ training camp on a Yorkshire farm
SOME of the operations I was involved with over the years had an almost comical edge to them — for example when I infiltrated a group of radicalised British-Pakistanis who worked out at a gym in Birmingham.
Tucked in an alleyway behind a fish and chip shop known locally as ‘Jimmy’s’, it had a martial arts area on the ground floor and a prayer room above. Islamic chants on loudspeakers pumped up the young men as they worked out — amond them several radicals in their late 20s.
After training sessions we would sit and listen to online sermons by preachers like Awlaki.
Since they knew I had experience in training camps, I was asked to organise an outdoor paramilitary exercise for them, and so one weekend seven of us drove into the Yorkshire countryside, where I rented a small patch of woodland from a farmer under the guise of using it to run courses in survival skills.
The group went into a frenzy of aggression, hacking at trees with machetes and exchanging jihadist talk over their walkie-talkies. But then they all went pale when the farmer and his dog came walking towards us.
Sure enough, he then reported us to the local police, and my MI5 handler, Andy, was furious. ‘What the f *** were you t hinking, doing t his without approval?’ he said. The last thing the security services needed was the Press finding out an MI5 agent was training would-be terrorists.
As it turned out, it was them who made the mistake when they failed to detect a plot by the very cell I had alerted them to. Just before the London Olympic Games in 2012 several of the group headed to Yorkshire again, this time with sawn-off shotguns and an improvised explosive device built from fireworks and shrapnel.
Their target was a rally by the English Defence League — an extremist anti-Muslim group — in Dewsbury, but they were stopped by a routine traffic patrol and, as well as the weapons, a message was found in the car declaring: ‘Today is the day for retaliation. We love death more than you love life.’ Five of them were later sentenced to lengthy prison terms.