EXTREMIST recruiters have been likened to paedophiles after online grooming was blamed for luring Britain’s youngest suicide bomber into the clutches of terrorists.
Talha Asmal, 17, reportedly detonated a vehicle fitted with explosives while fighting for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
Talha’s family said that despite him never exhibiting any extreme or radical views, he had been exploited by extremists on the internet “in a process of deliberate and calculated grooming of him”.
Qari Asim, an imam at the Makkah Mosque in Leeds, said recruitment was mainly taking place online. “The per- petrators are pretty much acting like paedophiles, they groom these young individuals over time – radicalisation isn’t an overnight process,” he told the BBC. “They prey on these vulnerable young people and brainwash them, and religion is a unique passion so they tend to use religion to brainwash these young indi- viduals for their own political aims and gains.”
Talha’s death has not yet been officially confirmed, but his parents said photographs showing a youth purportedly named Abu Yusuf Al Britany appeared to depict their son.
He is alleged to have fled his home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in March, to join Isil along with his next-door neighbour and best friend Hassan Munshi, the brother of Britain’s youngest convicted terrorist Hammad Munshi.
Shahid Malik, a former government minister and a family friend of the Asmals, said: “This is a generational struggle and everyone must be willing to rise to the challenge.”