It is becoming obvious that shoe bomber Richard Reid had expert help. By Home Affairs Editor Neil Mackay
IT was the perfect moment to detonate a bomb. At 3.45pm on Saturday afternoon, as American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami reached the so-called point -of-no-return - the halfway marker between continental Europe and America - Richard Reid tried to set light to a fuse concealed in the heel of one of his black trainers leading to ten pounds of plastic explosives also packed into the shoe. Another French passenger, Thierry Dugeon, who was sitting ten rows away from Reid, raced down the aisles to help. "I was there in five seconds and there were already two or three guys on him," Dugeon said. "He was struggling, he was a real powerful guy, but we were five or six people. It was like everybody knew what they needed to do." Reid fought so ferociously that one passenger, Kwame James, a professional basketball player, described him as "unbelievably strong, almost possessed". Eventually beaten into submission and bound to his seat with belts, Reid was sedated by a doctor on the flight from the cabin crew's emergency first aid kit. As the in-flight movie, Legally Blonde, played mutely on aeroplane screens, Reid was given two more injections - to make sure he was out for the count. It was then that real terror set in for the passengers and crew. They had at least two more hours in the air with an unexploded bomb. The pilots radioed ahead to North American Aerospace Defence Command. Two F-15 fighter jets from Otis Air Force base on Cape Cod cut out into the Atlantic to escort the plane to Logan Airport in Boston. As a battered Reid was led into custody, an FBI agent asked him what he was trying to achieve. "You'll find out," he said, "you'll find out." The FBI are now sure - from piecing together the facts of Reid's life - that he did not act alone. This was a 28-year-old petty criminal from London, not a crack terrorist with the know-how or brains to plan such a daring attack. According to forensic experts, the construction of the bomb was "alarmingly sophisticated". In a Boston court on Friday - where Reid is facing initial charges of assaulting flight crew - FBI Special Agent Margaret Cronin said the bomb in Reid's shoes would have punched a hole in the side of flight 63 and Reid must have had conspirators. The last man to try a similar attack was Ramzi Yousef, now serving life in a maximum security federal jail in the USA for his role in masterminding the first car-bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993. Yousef had subsequently tried to bring down 10 airliners in 1994 by smuggling explosives on board in his shoes in the so-called Bojinka Plot. One device exploded, killing one passenger, although it failed to bring down the plane. Yousef is looked on by the world's law enforcement community as a master terrorist with a huge network of followers and backers, including the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It is unimaginable that Reid could have funded and executed the operation alone. From the moment he was brought off Flight 63, the search was under way for his accomplices. Reid was born to an English mother and a Jamaican father in Bromley, London in 1973. He wound up in Feltham Young Offenders' Centre in his late teens. There he converted to Islam, taking the Arabic name Abdel Rahim. Last month, Feltham's imam was suspended over allegations of unprofessional conduct relating to September 11. It is alleged that Abdul Rahman Qureshi delivered inflammatory sermons in which he referred to "the big devil America", and was distributing literature to prisoners describing America as "the great evil which must be wiped out". Prison sources say Qureshi's father was the Feltham imam when Reid was there in the mid-1990s. Ahmed Bilal, imam of Aylesbury Young Offenders' Institution, was also dismissed for a similar infraction in October, and an imam at Belmarsh Prison was investigated but cleared over alleged "inappropriate links". Tayab Ali, a member of the Central London Mosque and a visiting imam at Wormwood Scrubs prison, said the current regime in British jails made it easy for extremists to enter prisons and preach firebrand politics. "It is left to the mosques to choose any Tom, Dick or Harry to go in and talk to vulnerable prisoners and it concerns me," he said. "There are not enough checks on these people in place. The local mosque chooses who they want and the police just check whether they have any criminal convictions. The mosques are doing the job the state should be doing." Zaki Badawi, principal of the Muslim College, says many mosques are recruiting imams from abroad who are bringing fundamentalist views to the UK. On his release from prison, Reid joined Arabic classes at Brixton mosque in 1996. Run primarily by British converts, the mosque is renowned for its orthodox but moderate view of Islam which has made it and its leaders hated among UK extremists. Abdul Haqq Baker, the cleric who runs the Brixton mosque, says extremists have been targeting his congregation for years and trying to recruit young converts, like Richard Reid, to their own particular radical form of Islam. "Recruiting has got out of control," said Baker, who converted to Islam in his 20s. He said he knew of "hundreds of Richard Reids" who had been recruited in the UK. Baker warned police about extremists recruiting young men but was ignored even though he gave the names of people allegedly operating on behalf of radical British -based clerics like Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada and Abdullah el-Faisal. The Metropolitan Police Authority admits that warnings about Muslim extremists, such as Reid and those who indoctrinated him, might not have been taken seriously when Baker passed on information. Deputy chairman Peter Herbert said: "With the benefit of hindsight, many things that may have been looked at with more scrutiny after September 11 were not looked at in such a way beforehand."
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It was while Reid was at Brixton mosque that he met fellow worshipper Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin who also lived in Brixton. Moussaoui is now in prison in America on charges of conspiracy relating to the September 11 attacks. He is suspected of being the "20th hijacker". Moussaoui was only prevented from taking part in the suicide attacks when he was detained after behaving suspiciously at a US flight school. He was eventually expelled from the Brixton mosque for his inflammatory beliefs. Baker believes that Moussaoui could have been the man who recruited Reid. Another worshipper at the mosque was Shahid Butt, from Birmingham, who was jailed for five years in Yemen for joining a group of British Muslims who plotted to attack the British consulate and a Christian church. Other suspected al-Qaeda members recruited in south London include a French national called Jerome Courtellier, now in custody in Holland, and Djamel Beghal, who was detained in Dubai and once lived in Brixton. After meeting Moussaoui, Reid began to change. "He became infuriatingly arrogant," said Baker. "He would try and speak to other unsuspecting youths about his views. We would try and stop him. He kept asking us: 'Do you know where there is jihad which I can fight?' He would wear military gear." Baker, who knew Reid well, said the "shoe-bomber" was incapable of carrying out the attack single-handedly. "No way could he do this on his own," said Baker. "He doesn't have the capacity to think: 'I'm going to get these explosives. I know where to get these explosives from. I'll put them in my shoe'." The mosque found Reid work making incense sticks, but towards the end of 1998 he stopped attending and is thought to have moved to Pakistan. For an ex -prisoner with little or no visible or legitimate means of support the trip to Pakistan was to be just the first in a series of expensive and regular journeys overseas. He visited seven countries in the months before his arrest. These included a ten-day trip to Israel and visits to Gaza, Egypt, Turkey, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Afghanistan - where it is believed he received some form of terrorist training. Reid's travels began in June when he made a three-week trip to the Middle East. He flew to Cairo, then on to Istanbul before finally arriving in Israel. French intelligence believes he was testing security on El Al flights during this journey. In Tel Aviv, security personnel grew suspicious of this bearded and distinctly odd visitor and pulled him in for questioning and security searches. Nothing untoward was discovered and he was sent on his way. From Israel, he moved back to Cairo after a short stop-over in the Palestinian -controlled city of Gaza, where it is thought that he contacted Hamas, the terrorist group behind recent suicide bombings which has developed close ties with al-Qaeda. French intelligence also believes he was establishing contacts with Islamic extremists in Egypt. His next trip was to Pakistan in August. It is believed that this was the journey that brought him into contact directly with al-Qaeda. US intelligence sources say al-Qaeda captives were shown Reid's photograph by Pakistani guards and remembered him being in an Afghan training camp sometime this year. European intelligence chiefs believe Moussaoui and Reid might have spent time together in one of these camps. It was around this time that Reid's mother, Lesley Hughes, contacted Brixton mosque. She says she was worried about her son and had no idea where he was. Last week she appeared as lost as ever over how her son had apparently turned into one of the world's most dangerous men. "He is my son,'' she said. "I am deeply shocked, as any mother would be. I am concerned about the allegations being made against my son. Other than what I have read in the media, I have no knowledge of this matter." Madeline Reid, Richard Reid's aunt, is not so confused over what might have turned her nephew into a terrorist. She says Reid was a "lost soul" who was so lonely and rejected by his family that "he found solace with his Muslim brothers". Reid's father, Robin, believes his son was brainwashed. Intelligence sources believe that from Pakistan and Afghanistan, Reid returned to a safe house in Amsterdam. Then, on December 7, he left the Dutch capital for Brussels, where he stayed for a week and obtained a new British passport from the UK consulate. This, and the fact that his previous passport had pages torn out of it, was an obvious attempt, British police believe, to disguise his previous movements. Reid returned to Amsterdam on December 14, where he picked up the customised shoes loaded with explosives. He claims he bought the explosives for around (pounds) 1000 after finding a seller online. Vincent van Steen, of the Dutch secret service, believes Reid was given the bomb in Holland by his co -conspirators. Two days later he travelled to Paris' Gard du Nord railway station on board a high-speed train. Despite his seemingly reduced circumstances, Reid was still able to spend almost (pounds) 3000 on a round-trip ticket from Paris via Miami and Antigua. The evening before he boarded Flight 63, he was barred from taking an earlier flight to the USA and ended up spending the night in the four-star Copthorne Hotel - paid for by American Airlines. Staff with the security firm ICTS "red-flagged" Reid when he tried to board the first flight to the States. He had no luggage, was nervous and scruffy and had paid in cash for his ticket - all warning signs. After a search, his small rucksack was found to contain only a Walkman with Arab music cassettes and verses of the Koran. During his night at the hotel, staff heard him praying loudly in his room. The next day he was cleared for boarding Flight 63. Reid has told his FBI interrogators that he acted alone. Nobody believes his claim. Despite his criminal background, his blatant flirtation with violent Islamic fundamentalism and his journeys to countries including Afghanistan, Reid still wasn't pinpointed as a potential security threat by MI5 or Special Branch. Perhaps all that had to be done was for the police and British intelligence and security chiefs to listen to the one man they chose to ignore - Abdul Haqq Baker, a voice from within the Muslim community and a man growing increasingly fearful about what was happening within Islam in the UK. He secretly recorded meetings, of the type Reid had attended with Moussaoui, where the only matter up for discussion was jihad. "Do you know what the police did when we offered them this information?" he asked. "They told me they'd 'monitor' the situation. These people were talking about holy war - and all we did was monitor them." CAPTION: Few believe Richard Reid, opposite page, acted alone in taking the foot bomb on board Flight 63; top, Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque, voiced his concerns to police over Reid; his mother, Lesley Hughes, is still mystified over her son's behaviour Main photograph: Peter Jordan/PA |