20 more Hamzas training terrorists

The radical clerics are suspected to be still at large and preaching extremism, reports Vijay Dutt.

Nearly 20 more Abu Hamza-like radical clerics holding militant views are suspected to be still at large and preaching extremism in Britain.

Fear was expressed that they would convert young university Muslim students and inmates of prisons in the same way that the July 7 bombers, three of whom had contacts with Hamza, were driven to extremism and mass murder.

The row over the caricatures of the Prophet would be an added weaponry in the hate arsenal of such Imams.

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The key institutions these Imams are targeting are university campuses and prisons from where many became terrorists in the past. About 100 Imams regularly visit UK jails, said an anti-terror chief.

The Government's watchdog chief Lord Carlile said that a small number of such Imams could have a disproportionate effect if they were in the wrong place. He cited the example of Richard Reid the shoe bomber, now in US prison for trying to blow an airliner on flight from Paris to New York. He was radicalised in jail.