Osama Bin Laden's "ambassador to Europe" was captured and arrested last week in London. The arrest is unlikely to help Britain in its war on terror but it may avert criticism that Britain is haven for Islamists, writes James Corbett Bermondsey is a piece of London time forgot. Wedged between prosperous Greenwich, the financial powerhouse of the "Square Mile", and the rising skyscrapers of the Docklands, it is one of the few parts of London that has escaped the city's recent gentrification. It remains a downmarket area of the capital dominated by low quality concrete housing jungles with an aura of greyness pervading over its buildings and residents. The neighbourhood has more in common with Dickensian-London than with any 21st century preconceptions of the city, yet it was in these inauspicious settings that British police last week arrested Abu-Qatada, a man accused of being Osama Bin Laden's European ambassador. Abu-Qatada's real name is Sheikh Mahmoud Abu-Omar. He is a Jordanian-born Palestinian cleric who has been living in London since 1994, when he was granted political asylum. He faces a death sentence in Jordan after being convicted, in-absentia, of funding a 1998 bombing campaign and has been accused by American and Spanish investigators of being Bin Laden's "ambassador" to Europe. He is also alleged to have links with the shoe-bomber, Richard Reid, and Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. After 11 September, Abu-Qatada's passport was seized, his assets frozen and he was ordered to stay in his house. Yet he disappeared last December, shortly before laws were passed that would have allowed the British government to detain him indefinitely based on suspicions of his links to Al-Qa'eda. Last week's arrest marked the end of an embarrassing 10-month search for the cleric during which rumours of his escape from Britain or even collaboration with the intelligence services were frequent. How far Abu-Qatada's arrest and imprisonment will actually help Britain's war on terror, or even its intelligence gathering efforts is a different matter. While the British authorities discovered that he had some �180,000 in his bank accounts, despite living off state benefits, and had some very tenuous connections with Reid and Moussaoui -- the evidence actually linking him to Al-Qa'eda is thin. The extensive inquiries carried out by Britain's anti- terrorism units at Scotland Yard and the internal secret service, MI5, have failed to uncover Al-Qa'eda cells operating in the United Kingdom. After years of experience and relative success in Northern Ireland, the skills of the British intelligence services are not to be underestimated. Their lack of discoveries, rather than showing any failure on their part, points to Al-Qa'eda being a loose network, without the cells that traditionally characterise terrorist organisations. While individuals in Britain have expressed various levels of sympathy with Osama Bin Laden, or have had contact with him in the past, and others still have undoubtedly passed through or come from Britain either on their way to the United States or to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya or Afghanistan, none of this points to an Al-Qa'eda base, nor to a recruitment network in the country's 1,000 mosques. This does not exonerate Abu-Qatada. He has openly backed Bin Laden, saying that the Saudi "had a point" in his desire to rid his home country of American influence, adding that he supported the Jihad. Abu-Qatada even met with Bin Laden in 1989. Naturally, this alone does not make him a terrorist and while the British government may yet have evidence linking the cleric to 11 September, it seems unlikely that he will be named as a major player in Al-Qa'eda. Britain has long been seen as an easy resting point for Islamists. Its sympathetic political asylum laws and relatively generous state welfare provisions make it a destination of choice for those seeking exile. With a large Muslim population and London's emergence as a sizable Islamic intellectual centre, it is little wonder that Abu-Qatada chose the city as his home in 1994. His presence, along with that of many other Middle Eastern exiles and similarly outspoken clerics has prompted outrage from some of Britain's European neighbours, the US and some British citizens who accuse the government of being a soft target and providing a base for would-be terrorists. Even President Hosni Mubarak accused Britain of sheltering terrorists after the Luxor massacre in 1997, saying militant leaders living in Britain and Afghanistan were the planners and financiers of the attacks. Abu-Qatada's arrest may well just be a sop to such criticism. Abu-Qatada is by no means the most notorious cleric to have stirred up trouble for the British Government. Abu- Hamza Al-Masri -- the so called "Ayatollah of Finsbury Park" -- was the British press's favourite bogeyman in the wake of 11 September. It is easy to see why. With a large metal hook replacing the left hand he lost fighting for the mujahidin in the 1980s and one eye covered by a patch, he cuts the figure of an almost comic villain with a reputation padded with a tirade of pro-Bin Laden invective from his north London mosque. Inflammatory and contrary to the sensibilities of most people this might be, but none of it is illegal. Yet like Abu- Qatada, Abu-Hamza has had his passport seized, bank account frozen and his day-to-day life made impossibly difficult through a campaign of harassment and intimidation -- even though the links between him and Al-Qa'eda are still slight, if not imagined. The crux of Britain's problem is silencing these clerics, a vociferous and self-promoting minority who undoubtedly punch above their weight, without appearing to negate their freedom of speech. Beyond its campaign of intimidation and arbitrary arrest its options are limited, but for the sake of its overseas and domestic critics alike the British government at least appears to be taking some action. How worthwhile the efforts actually are, remains deeply questionable.
