PRESS RELEASE
EIR Exposed British Role as
Terror Safe Haven in 2000
Nov. 28, 2008 (EIRNS)—On Jan. 11, 2000, Executive Intelligence Review Counterintelligence Director Jeffrey Steinberg submitted a memorandum, on behalf of the Editors of EIR, to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and eight other top Clinton Administration national security officials, as well as leaders of both the House and the Senate, calling for Great Britain to be put on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Steinberg memorandum exclusively drew upon official government documents from India, Egypt, Israel, France, Algeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Libya, Nikgeria, Yemen and Russia—all in the form of diplomatic demarches, protesting London's harboring and supporting of hardcore terrorist organizations.
In light of the ongoing Mumbai attack, it is noteworthy that the Steinberg memo to Albright began by noting that the issue of Britain's role in supporting international terrorism "has been recently highlighted, as the result of the December 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking, and the response of the British government to the request of one of the freed Kashmiri terrorists, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, to be given safe passage to England. Mr. Sheikh, a British national, was tried and convicted in India, for his role in the kidnapping of four British nationals and an American in 1995. He was sentenced to five years in prison on November 1988. Initially, the British government announced that it would provide Mr. Sheikh with safe passage to Britain, and would not prosecute him or make any effort to extradite him back to India."
The recurring pattern, documented in the EIR memorandum, was that the British government provided safe-haven and political protection, as well as financing, to known terrorists, and turned a blind eye when mosques in Britain were used as recruiting grounds for terrorists, who were then sent to training camps, and on to live operations. Russia strongly protested the role of British mosques in recruiting terrorists who went for training in Afghanistan, throughout the 1990s, and wound up in Chechnya.
The EIR memorandum was published in the Jan. 21, 2000 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, and was widely circulated, at the time, among governments around the world. Secretary of State Albright never responded to the EIR document.
