REVEALED Jihadi from Morrisons hunted by MI5 tried to recruit MoS man to fight in Syria
As he suggests ‘Thunderbirds’ club of ex-leaders...
A NOTORIOUS British jihadi fighting with Islamic State terrorists in Syria tried to recruit an undercover Mail on Sunday reporter posing as an impressionable young Muslim.
Fanatic Omar Hussain – known as the Supermarket Jihadi – issued detailed instructions on how to travel to Syria to commit acts of terror but avoid detection by police and security services.
In a series of chilling voice and text messages Hussain, 27, who once threatened to ‘bomb the UK’, cynically encouraged the would-be recruit, claiming the thrill of battle would make him a better Muslim.
Believing our investigator had accepted the sickening call to arms, Hussain – who slipped out of Britain to fight for barbaric IS despite being on a police watch list – plotted to smuggle the reporter into Syria.
In a series of instructions, he:
Told the reporter to destroy his mobile phone and SIM card to put police and MI5 off his scent.
Advised him to travel to Turkey via at least one other European country to bypass strict antiterrorist controls at British airports.
Promised to arrange a secret rendezvous with IS terrorists in Istanbul who would smooth his path to Syria.
Instructed him to bring £500 in cash and some clothes, promising IS would take care of everything else.
Last night the South-East CounterTerrorism Unit (SECTU) asked The Mail on Sunday to pass on all our material to them. A spokesman said: ‘SECTU is aware of reports of individuals in Syria encouraging people to join in on terrorist activities.’
Former security guard Hussain’s callous attempt to recruit a would-be jihadi comes as MPs warned that IS terrorists were preying on young British Muslims on social media and luring them to Syria. The series of messages provides a terrifying insight into the way jihadis are grooming British Muslims to join IS.
A recent report by the Home Affairs Select Committee warned the number of young people going to Syria was at an ‘alarming level’, with most groomed on the internet.
Latest Home Office estimates are that more than 600 British Muslims have gone to Syria to join terror groups, although experts say it could be as high as 2,000.
In recent months, four schoolgirls from Tower Hamlets in East London fled their homes to join IS – their families claimed they were lured on the internet by jihadis – and a British family of nine from Rochdale, Lancashire, was stopped by Turkish police trying to cross into Syria.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘This is appalling – a person trying to recruit another to go to Syria. Our inquiry found that social media and the internet is the biggest element in recruiting Britons to Syria.’
Hussain left Britain in December 2013, flying to Turkey via Gatwick, despite being a known extremist who was stopped at Heathrow airport six months earlier.
Once in Syria, he began making threats against the UK on the internet using the nom de guerre Awlaki. He warned how he would like to return to bomb Britain, and in one IS video described David Cameron as a ‘despicable swine’.
In August last year, The Mail on Sunday published Hussain’s real identity, and revealed how he lived in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, with his family, and worked as secu-
‘Yo man, why is the tank scared of me?’
rity guard in a Morrisons store. In January, a MoS reporter, posing as a young Muslim called Abu Mohammad from East London, contacted Hussain on his Facebook page, which he ran under the name of Ahlus Sunnah II. When the reporter – who claimed to be bored with his job in the UK – said he wanted to join the ‘caliphate’ that IS has declared in Syria, Hussain encouraged him to make the ‘hijra’, or migration.
The terrorist – now working in the IS police force known as hisbah – then gave the reporter a Turkish mobile number and asked him to contact him using instant messaging service WhatsApp. Within days of this exchange, Facebook closed down Hussain’s account as well as that of the reporter.
The MoS man then contacted Hussain via WhatsApp, and told him that he would like to join IS. Hussain encouraged him by telling the reporter his ‘iman’, or religious faith, would rise higher. He said: ‘Bro, just imagine you go to the bat- tlefield, you see bullets flying over your head, you see a brother on your right get shot, another on your left, like yani [I mean] get blown up, yani, it’s the place to be, yani, if you want your iman to go high, you know.’
He spoke of near-miraculous incidents on the battlefield, where IS fighters scare off tanks. He said: ‘Sometimes a tank’s chasing after you, you are like in a dead-end, and the tank stops, turns around, and drives off, and you are like: “Yo man, what does the tank see? Why is the tank scared of me?” You know, subhanallah [Glory be to God].’
As days went by, Hussain encouraged the reporter to go to Istanbul, but told him to first go through France and Italy, and then fly out to the Turkish city, to prevent anti-terrorist police stopping the reporter at a British airport.
He then told the would-be recruit to destroy his SIM and mobile in case police or MI5 were monitoring.
Hussain said: ‘If you are in the UK, you may wanna delete, or let me rephrase that, you may wanna throw this SIM away and get a new SIM ’cos just in case the authorities are on to you. In the UK, the kuffar [infidel] authorities are tracking my number.’ After the reporter told Hussain he was ready to make the journey to Syria, the IS fighter texted: ‘Just come to Istanbul, that will be fine. You don’t need to bring anything, just bring enough cash, about $600, $700, that will be jayed [good].’
He added: ‘As for what’s gonna happen once you are in Istanbul, just message me and I’ll hook you up with a few brothers. They’ve been doing it for some time. They are gonna pick you up from a destination and take you to the border between Shaam [Syria] and Turkey inshallah [God willing].’
The investigator then flew to Istanbul and contacted Hussain from a hotel in the city’s Taksim Square area. The IS jihadi told him to destroy his British phone and buy a new Turkish SIM and smartphone and download WhatsApp and encrypted messaging software Surespot.
Hussain said: ‘Stay in Istanbul atm
[at the moment], but keep indoors most of the time.’ As the IS fighter organised his agents to meet the reporter to take him to the Syrian border, the investigator did not return WhatsApp messages, or contact him on Surespot, but flew back to the UK.
Once in London, the investigator contacted Hussain, asking him why the jihadi did not return his messages from his new Turkish phone. Hussain replied: ‘I was waiting for ur msg, and Allah is a witness to that.’
The reporter asked if he should try again to go to Syria. Hussain replied: ‘Akhi [my brother] come. If u believe it’s fard [Islamically obligatory] upon you then come.’
Last night, Lord Carlile, the Government’s former counter-terrorism watchdog, said: ‘This highlights how organised IS recruitment is in taking people to Syria. The Government should be closing down such recruitment. The internet is central.’
Last night Hussain could not be contacted. His family in High Wycombe declined to comment.
DEMOCRACY is important. But democracy is not on its own sufficient.’ Who said these words? A tinpot dictator? A swivel-eyed Dr Evil in a Bond spoof movie? In fact, no. This was our beloved former premier, Tony Blair. And his startling remark surely now begs the question: has he finally gone completely mad?
The latest wheeze, you see, of our perma-tanned, globe-trotting, property-collecting ex-PM is to create the political equivalent of International Rescue. He sees himself as one of a new elite ‘club’ of former political leaders who can be parachuted in at a moment’s notice to help floundering governments solve big problems such as disease, famine and war… A benevolent, diplomatic Thunderbird ready to launch himself –5, 4, 3, 2, 1! – from the Tracy Island of his own fevered imagination.
‘I’ve done British,’ he told an American magazine last week, referring to his ten years in Downing Street. ‘Where I think I can make most difference is at a global level, working on things that had interested me as Prime Minister but I was not able to devote myself to.’
Yes! At ‘a global level’! According to this grey-haired Scott Tracy, the reason he and his pals like Bill Clinton would make better leaders than serving politicians is because they don’t have to deal with pesky little problems such as explaining themselves to the media, which Blair dismisses as a ‘wall of noise’. Or, indeed, the tiresome impediment of getting re-elected.
Modern leaders have to spend far too much time ‘communicating’, says the man who used to be joined at the hip to his spin doctor, instead of concentrating on ‘the big questions’.
‘This is a shocking thing to say,’ he said, ‘but in modern politics, if you are spending 30 per cent to 40 per cent of your time on your real core priorities, I think you’re lucky. I can think of political leaders and systems who are lucky if they get 5 per cent.’
No such irritations would afflict Blair and his ‘cadre’ of multi-millionaire ex-leaders. Freed from the burden of democratic accountability, they would be able to focus with laser-like intensity on the world’s ills – assuming you could afford their services, of course.
TAKE the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Lesser statesman have been grappling with this problem for decades, but Blair says the solution is ‘perfectly obvious’ to him. Two states living side-by-side, separated by a frontier based on the 1967 border, with plenty of trade links to foster ‘shared economic prosperity’.
‘How hard would it be to reach a peace agreement?’ asks the 61year-old savant. ‘The answer is not very hard at all.’
If you think Blair’s plans for a globetrotting power elite sound a bit undemocratic, you’d be right. But the man who led his party to three electoral victories has lost faith in democracy.
Last December, he wrote an article for the New York Times in which he posed the question: ‘Is democracy dead?’ He concluded that it was on life support, if not completely defunct. It was ‘slow, bureaucratic and weak’, ‘failing its citizens’ and ‘failing to deliver’. Elected politicians spend far too much time chasing the popular vote, according to Blair, which amounted to ‘governing by Twitter’.
The solution is to outsource the tough decisions to experienced elder statesmen like him – just make the cheque out to ‘Tony Blair and Partners’.
This scheme is so stark raving bonkers it’s difficult to know where to start. For one thing, the egomaniacal Blair has been jetting round the world and offering his advice to political leaders for almost ten years and his track record is far from impressive.
As a Special Envoy for ‘The Quartet’ – a club consisting of the US, Russia, the United Nations and the EU – Blair has been trying to bring peace to the Middle East since 2007.
In that time, two wars have broken out between Israel and Gaza; violent revolutions have engulfed Egypt, Tunisia and Libya; civil war has erupted in Syria and Iraq; the Islamic State has wreaked terror across the region; and Saudi Arabia has declared war on Yemen.
So hopeless has Blair’s leadership of The Quartet been, he looks almost certain to be sacked in the next few months – which may be the reason he’s launched this crackpot initiative.
As a ‘strategic adviser’ to bil- lionaire oligarchs in the former Soviet Union, Blair has enjoyed more success. For one thing, he’s amassed a personal fortune estimated at £100million.
However, his wise counsel to the region’s l eaders hasn’t always paid off.
SHORTLY after he signed on as a paid adviser to the autocratic leader of Kazakhstan in 2011, the regime shot dead 14 protesters and injured 64 in the oil town of Zhanaozen. Is this what Blair had in mind when he told the American magazine that leaders of small states were ‘excellent executors’?
The jet-setting do-gooder has had no more luck with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a charity he set up in 2008 to combat ‘religious extremism’.
Since then, Islamic terrorism has grown to become the number one threat to global security, culminating with the emergence of IS. It’s unfair, obviously, to lay the scourge of Islamism at the feet of Blair – although the wars he took us into in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t help – but it’s hard to point to a single success of his interfaith initiative.
The ex-Labour panjandrum resembles King Midas in one respect – kerching! – but when it comes to geopolitics he lacks the Midas touch. Whatever conflict he touches seems to get worse.
But it’s not just his appalling track record as an international problem-solver that makes his attempts so wrong-headed.
It’s his casual dismissal of democracy as ‘weak’ and his lordly disdain for the nuts and bolts of the democratic process.
In the same American interview he singles out the regime of Lee Kuan Yew, the man who founded Singapore and served as the country’s unelected Prime Minister for 31 years before handing over to his son, as the very model of good governance.
‘Some felt the measures they took were pretty tough,’ said Blair. ‘But Singapore is a functioning state of a very high order because of the decisions they took.’
Listening to his ramblings, it’s hard not to conclude he thinks he would have been a much more effective Prime Minister of Great Britain if hadn’t had to stand for re-election – just like Singapore’s benevolent dictator.
Having failed to realise his dream of unchecked power while in office, he’s trying to achieve it through the back door. Which makes his endorsement of Ed Miliband last week look rather sinister.
If you thought the prospect of Miliband in No10 was chilling – consider the implications of voting Miliband – and getting Blair.
If, God forbid, Red Ed succeeds, the office of Tony Blair may well relocate from swish West End to Downing Street.
A Thunderbird ready to launch from Tracy Island