Pakistan militant group builds web of Western recruits
Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant group blamed in the Mumbai attacks, has actively recruited U.S.- and British-born contacts who have gone on to execute attacks for Al Qaeda.
Reporting from London — The Pakistani extremist group suspected in the Mumbai rampage remains a distant shadow for most Americans. But the threat is much nearer than it seems.
For years, Lashkar-e-Taiba has actively recruited Westerners, especially Britons and Americans, serving as a kind of farm team for Islamic militants who have gone on to execute attacks for Al Qaeda, a close ally. The Pakistani network makes its training camps accessible to English speakers, providing crucial skills to an increasingly young and Western-born generation of extremists.
Briton Aabid Khan was one of them. When British police arrested him at Manchester International Airport on his return from Pakistan in June 2006, they found a trove of terrorist propaganda and manuals on his laptop that the trial judge later described as "amongst the largest and most extensive ever discovered." The haul included maps and videos of potential targets in New York City and Washington.
One video, shot deep in Pakistani extremist turf, shows the then-21-year-old Khan with a grinning young man who says he's from Los Angeles -- a mysterious figure in a case that apparently illustrates Lashkar's dangerous reach.
In August, a court here sentenced Khan to 12 years in prison on charges of possession of articles for use in an act of terrorism and making records useful for terrorism. As a hub of a cyber-constellation of extremist cells, the Briton organized training expeditions to Pakistan for his confederates, computer-obsessed youths who, whatever their mother tongue, communicated in the fractured English slang of the Internet and hatched plots against their homelands in the West, according to his trial and related prosecutions.
"These camps are ideal for people who speak English," said Evan Kohlmann, an independent U.S. investigator who was a paid consultant for the prosecution team in the Khan case and was integral to building the case against him.
"Newbie militants can make real contacts. They perceive that Lashkar-e-Taiba . . . are below the radar. They are less likely to attract negative attention. It's an easier ladder rung to reach. Lashkar is seen as a rung to get to Al Qaeda."
