Islamic radicals were trying to enlist young Muslim men in a British town into extremist training camps linked to notorious cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, a British newspaper said yesterday.
Meanwhile, a senior police officer said Britain's national parks were being used as "pure indoctrination camps" to brainwash young Muslims.
Moderate Muslims in Redhill, south of London, told the Times newspaper that interlopers at their mosque were or had been members of Al-Muhajiroun, Bakri's supposedly defunct organization which British Prime Minister Tony Blair intends to ban in a crackdown on hardline Islamists following the London bombings in July.
The Syrian-born Bakri, Al-Muhajiroun's founder and spiritual leader, is one of Britain's best known -- many would say notorious -- radical Muslim clerics.
He is being held by Lebanese police after leaving London last Saturday on a supposed holiday.
The Times said scuffles broke out at Redhill's Islamic Center as angry parents prevented agitators from entering.
The newspaper said it uncovered physical training camps for young Muslims last year in nearby Crawley, next to London's Gatwick Airport. Teenagers were recruited by Al-Muhajiroun leaders and taught how to fight and keep fit.
Redhill elders claimed the same faces were approaching young Muslim men in their town, trying to pressure them into enlisting for similar camps.
"We are aware that this is how extremist groups were recruiting people to go to Afghanistan," said Qamar Bhatti, a spokesman for the Redhill mosque.
"They started to follow people and asked to talk to them. This was disturbing," Bhatti said. "These visitors would say to them ...`British society undermines our faith,' just starting to chip away at people."
"Some youngsters got involved in all this because they were impressionable," he said. "These people started talking about seminars, which they later called training camps."
Meanwhile, a senior police officer said Britain's national parks were being used to indoctrinate young Muslims.
"Consider the training camps run in this country by the extremists," said Chief Constable Colin Cramphorn of northern England's West Yorkshire Police force.
"They're not like the Irish Republican Army camps in Donegal [in Ireland] where people are learning how to fire mortars. They're actually pure indoctrination camps. It's much more than just a few white-water rafting trips such as the [July 7 London] bombers took," he told the Spectator magazine.
"Wherever there's a national park, you'll find them," he said. "All we can do now is track them, rather than disrupt them."
He suggested there might be 300 hardcore militants in Britain.
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