Press Trust of India Posted online: Monday, April 26, 2004 at 1244 hours IST
New York, April 26: More and more Asian youths are actively responding to calls of jihad rising in the streets of Europe, British counter-terrorism officials have said.
On the streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a fervour for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open, intelligence officials said.
In the former industrial town of Luton in Britain, a group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II, have turned against their families' new home, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The youths said they would like to see British Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
They sweared allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies, it said, quoting officials.
Recently, at a community hall in Slough, west of London, the group's leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to bin Laden.
"If Europe fails to heed bin Laden's offer of a truce -- which asked for withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq in three months - Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, Sheik said.
