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Former al-Qaeda recruiter detained

16/ 5/2008

A FORMER al-Qaeda recruiter is being questioned by anti-terror police.

Hassan Butt, who was raised in Cheetham Hill and attended Abraham Moss High School, was detained at Manchester Airport last Friday afternoon.

Mr Butt is thought to have arrived at Terminal 2 and bought a ticket to Lahore, Pakistan, 45 minutes before the Pakistan International Airlines flight was due to leave.

The 31-year-old had previously acted as a recruiter for al-Qaeda and raised tens of thousands of pounds for terror networks.

But following the London bombings in 2005, he says he left the group and is now turning extremists away from terrorism.

The arrest comes a month after manuscripts for a book he wrote on his jihadist past were seized by police.

He is being questioned by Greater Manchester's regional counter terrorism unit, who have searched his home in north Manchester and two other properties nearby. Two cars were also taken away for forensic examination.

A police spokesman said: "A 31-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of terrorist activity and officers were involved in searching three addresses."

In autumn 2001, as part of the radical Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, Mr Butt helped hundreds of British recruits get weapons training in Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taleban against American and British forces.

Among their trainees was Mohammed Siddique Khan, who led the London bombers on 7 July 2005. He left the network in January 2006 and has been working with some of his original recruits since then to turn them away from terror.