A while back the BBC reported on the conviction of Kazi Nurur Rahman. Rahman, you’ll recall, tried to buy Uzis, RPGs and SAM-7s for terrorist purposes.

The Beeb’s report noted that:

When interviewed by police Rahman claimed he was working for MI5, who had recruited him 10 years earlier.

But, in pleading guilty to attempting to possess property intending it should be used for the purpose of terrorism, he later accepted this story was untrue.

Here’s the actual draft opening for the prosecution, which records this rather more fully. On the afternoon of Thursday, 1 December 2005:

Rahman made a prepared statement, which was read out by his legal representative. He said that he was not a terrorist and had no link with terrorist organisations, claiming that he had been acting under duress, fearing for the safety of himself and his family. He further claimed to have been tasked by an Anti-Terrorist Organisation, which he claimed to be in fear of.

An interview then followed at 1.38pm in which he gave a story stating that he had been specifically tasked to infiltrate terrorist groups. He claimed that he was recruited when he was on remand in prison about 10 years before and that he had been involved in a number of successful operations. He referred to meeting his handlers in hotel rooms and that he had been paid tens of thousands of pounds over the years. He later stated that he had no knowledge of the fact that there were Uzi machine guns in the van, and that he had expected to see two or three handguns and that he was to report back to his handlers by text message. The evidence of Mohamed [an undercover police officer] in relation to his dealings with Rahman clearly refutes this. There is, of course, no truth in his claims to have been working for the security forces.

In a later interview when disclosure had been given concerning items found at the search of his home address, Rahman stated items seized by police would have been
“planted” by the Anti-Terrorist Organisation. He identified this organisation as being MI5.

On 2 December in further interview concerning 55 Huddlestone Road [There are Huddlestone Roads in London in E7, Forest Gate, and NW2, Willesden], he stated the following:

“I have come to the conclusion that 55 Huddlestone is owned by either MI5 or you guys and I have been badly stitched up.”

He then referred to a map of Afghanistan inside the premises and stated that it should be examined for fingerprints, stating that either police or MI5 fingerprints would be found on it.

The use of informants is an important and long-standing tactic of security services around the world. Recruitment, especially of youngsters whilst on remand, is well-documented in Northern Ireland, e.g. this article from the Irish News:

Mark Haddock was just 16 years of age when he was recruited as a police informer.

In 1985 he had agreed to work as an informer after being arrested for a petrol-bomb attack on a bus in north Belfast.

Haddock is understood to have acted as a low-level criminal during the late 1980s, receiving small sums of money for information passed onto police.

Use of informants is fraught with problems, however – as not just anti-terrorist, but drugs enforcement agencies have found.

Ten years before his arrest in 2005, Kazi Rahman was on remand. Here’s why.

On Thursday, 23 February 1995, Omar Bakri Mohammed gave a speech at Newham College of Further Education. Bakri was the leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and later al-Muhajiroun. In 1991, during the first Gulf War he’d been detained briefly by British police for making a veiled threat against the then Prime Minister John Major.

A couple of hundred students came to hear Bakri speak, and according to one of them, he did not disappoint – “Bakri had visited our campus a few days before and had given one of his incendiary speeches and everyone was all worked up.”

Four days later a group of armed young Muslims set upon a 20-year-old Nigerian student, Tundi Obanubi. The Nigerian’s crime, one of them said later, was to disrespect Islam. Asian students killing a young African in a forgotten corner of London didn’t make much news, but it did get picked up by the Times Higher Educational Supplement.

A week after the murder, the THES began its report: “Police were this week playing down reports that the fatal stabbing of a London student was racially motivated, for fear of heightening factional tension on campus.” The report quoted a member of staff:

“Concerns have also been expressed about the college not coming to terms with a group of Asian fundamentalists, some of whom are students, some from
outside the college. Basically they have taken over student societies and only ever want to discuss elements of Islam in an increasingly hostile type of environment.”

However, the same staff member said it was “unclear” if this group had anything to do with the stabbing.

Although police played down the Islamist aspects of the case at the time, for an agency wishing to recruit young Islamists, the Obanubi murder would have presented an excellent opportunity. Kazi Rahman was tried for, but acquitted of, Obanubi’s murder.

Interestingly, although Rahman had been an associate of Mohamed Junaid Babar, who was arrested by the FBI in April 2004, the operation to entrap him was only put into action after the 7/7 bombings, on 20 July 2005 – a lengthy gap.

During the operation, in fact less than a month before his arrest, Rahman was allowed to leave the UK to go to Saudi Arabia from 26 October to 10 November 2005. Rahman’s guilty plea and subsequent retraction of the MI5 claims of course draw a firm line under any suggestion that he could have been an informer, and few perhaps will be concerned that he’s now behind bars.

But the current anti-terrorism campaign undoubtedly does involve informants, and one wonders if the security services are any better able to manage them than their predecessors in Northern Ireland.