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Relations between Muslims and police hit all time low after a fiasco raid on a Muslim house in East London. |
CAIRO — Britain's internal intelligence agency, MI5, and police have been spying on 8,000 people through information gathered from colleges, mosques, internet websites and agents on suspicion of being Al-Qaeda sympathizers and future terrorists, a leading British newspaper reported on Monday, July 3.
"The whole Rich Picture business is an investigation to get information on the ground which we would not have looked at before," a security source told The Independent.
"It is not an attempt by agencies to spy on the Muslim population. It's looking at those people directly attached or linked to terrorist activities," he added.
Codenamed "Rich Picture," the operation is being done through eight centers with the help of GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping center in the spa town of Cheltenham.
Four operational centers are located in Scotland, the north-west, north-east and midlands.
A further four in the south-west, Wales, the east and the south-east will be operational by year's end.
The eavesdropping operation was launched shortly after the terrorist 7/7 attacks on London's underground system last year, which killed 56 people including four British-born Muslims.
It is based on intelligence suggestion that there is a very small, but significant number of British-born and Britain-based Muslims prepared to carry out bombings and other terrorist attacks in the European country.
The 8,000 people under the police microscope represent a tiny 0.5 percent of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims.
An ICM survey found in February that 91 percent of British Muslims are "loyal" to Britain and 80 percent still want to live in and accept Western society.
The poll showed that that 99 percent of British Muslims believed the July 7 bombers were "wrong" to carry out the atrocity.
Anger
The spy operation is certain to provoke anger among British Muslims, who complain of being unfairly targeted and stigmatized since the London bombings, the paper said.
A massive police raid on a Muslim house in east London in has broadened a confidence gap between Muslims the police.
Two young Muslim brothers, one of whom was shot during the raid, were arrested and then later released without charge.
Police admitted the operation was based on wrong intelligence.
Newly-strengthened anti-terror laws have further alienated many Muslims due to random arrests and searches.
Continuous police operations, searches and arrests, and the extended period which suspects can be held without charge, has entrenched the fear in the Muslim community that it is being targeted.
The British parliament's influential Foreign Affairs Committee said on Sunday, July 2, that international conflicts, such as the situation in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories, breed feelings of injustice in the Muslim world which can boost support for terrorism, even inside Britain.
The London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs has said that the war gave a momentum to Al-Qaeda's recruitment and fundraising and made Britain more vulnerable to terror attacks.
As for the socio-economic reasons, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who make up almost half of the Muslim minority, have the highest unemployment rate and the lowest level of qualifications compared to other immigrant communities.
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