1998: Inspired by Abu Hamza, Seven Young British Men Go to Afghanistan, Two Die Fighting

Following a talk in Burnley by radical London cleric and informer Abu Hamza al-Masri (see Early 1997), seven young men from the northern English town go to Afghanistan, where two of them die. At the talk, one of Abu Hamza’s aides, a man from Birmingham in central England who had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia, had given a warm-up speech demanding violence and “blood sacrifice” in Britain. He told the audience: “Get training. There must be some martial arts brothers amongst yourselves. You have to pump into the brothers what you are training for. It’s so you can get the kuffar and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat, so you can whip his intestines out. That’s why you do the training, so you can rip the people to pieces. Forget wasting a bullet on them, cut them in half.” The seven local men leave shortly after, saying they are going to Pakistan to study in religious schools. A few months later, news arrives that two of the men, one a university student, the other an accountancy graduate, have been killed in shelling by the Northern Alliance in Kabul. It comes to light that they had been approached to help the Taliban. Local community leader Rafique Malik will say: “Nobody knew, not even their parents, that they were going to Afghanistan. They went to Pakistan and the next thing their parents heard is that they are dead.” Abu Hamza will subsequently be banned from preaching in the Burnley mosque. [O’Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 59-60]