Posted on 05/01/2003 8:26:42 AM PDT by milestogo
The alleged involvement of two British men in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv has shocked many, but it is not the first time UK citizens have been accused of playing a role in Islamic terrorist violence.
Israeli authorities investigating the bombing at a cafe say the suicide bomber, who killed himself and three other people, and an accomplice who fled the scene were British citizens.
The incident follows a number of cases in which Britons have been caught up in Islamic violence.
In January 2002, Briton Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh masterminded the kidnap and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.
He was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court last July, and his recent appeal was delayed.
Omar Sheikh was born in London and attended the London School of Economics.
He was a close associate of Maulana Azhar Masood - founder of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) group, which India blames for an attack on its parliament in December 2001.
Cuba inmates
In January this year, London-born Richard Reid was jailed for life in the US after admitting trying to blow up a commercial flight using explosives hidden in his shoes in December 2001.
The son of an English mother and Jamaican father, so-called "shoe bomber" Reid was born in 1973 in the London suburb of Bromley.
He was a petty criminal who converted to Islam while in a British jail, and declared himself both a follower of Osama bin Laden and an enemy of America.
Nine Britons are currently being held without charge by the US in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Most were captured in 2001 during US military action against the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Moazzem Begg from Birmingham was the latest Briton to be taken to Cuba, when he was moved from Afghanistan to a holding facility at Guantanamo Bay in February.
He was arrested in Pakistan a year earlier on suspicion of links with the Taleban regime or the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
He joined three men from Tipton - Shafiq Rasul, 24, Asif Iqbal, 20, and Ruhal Ahmed, also 20 - who were found with the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001.
Other British inmates are Feroz Abbasi, 22, from Croydon, south London, Martin Mubanga, 29, from north London, Jamal Udeen, 35, from Manchester, Richard Belmar, 23, from London and Tarek Dergoul, 24, from east London.
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