July 2002: Future Alleged Ricin Plotter Arrested in Britain, Police Fail to Notice Illegal Overstay

Kamal Bourgass, a radical who will go on to be involved in an alleged ricin plot and kill a policeman (see January 5, 2003), is arrested for stealing two pairs of jeans in East London. He is taken to a police station, interviewed, charged, and fined £70 (about $110) by a magistrate. However, according to authors Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory, “His immigration status as an illegal overstayer [is] not discovered, because on the night he [is] detained there [are] no immigration officers on duty in London with whom his name could [be] cross-referenced.” The jeans were apparently stolen as a part of a terrorism fundraising racket run out of London’s Finsbury Park mosque; members of the racket steal clothes and then sell them on a market stall. British authorities are aware of various illegal financial activities at the mosque (see 1995-April 21, 2000), but what they know of Bourgass at this point is unclear. [O’Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 243]