Exploiting democracy
In 2000, Bakri told Cybercast News Service in an interview: "We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy."
Britain's legal system and its willingness late last century to offer asylum to figures like Bakri, al-Masri and Abu Qatada made it a magnet for exiled radical organizations.
"In the past decade, the United Kingdom's undisputed political, economic, and cultural center has also become a major world center of political Islam and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American activism," writes Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Robert S. Wistrich, in online excerpts of an article to be published soon.
"Through its Arabic-language newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses, not to mention its flourishing network of bookshops, mosques, and community centers, radical Islam has taken full advantage of what British democracy has to offer for its anti-Western goals, reaping the benefits of London's significance as a hub of global finance, electronic media, and mass communications technology."
Osama bin Laden himself laid the groundwork for a London-based network, according to terrorism researcher Yossef Bodansky.
In his biography on bin Laden, written before 9/11, Bodansky wrote that the al-Qaeda leader based himself in the London suburb of Wembley in 1994. By the time he left, after the Saudis began demanding his expulsion, "he had consolidated a comprehensive system of entities" in the city.