Unhelpful reminder No.9: we were offered 'ceasefire'

Guardian: Bin Laden 'offered ceasefire' to UK

An Islamic extremist said that the London bombings were the consequence of Britain's refusal to accept the offer of a "ceasefire" from Osama bin Laden.

Abu Izzadeen, who described himself as a spokesman for the Al-Ghurabaa organisation, said that bin Laden had made the offer conditional on troop withdrawal, apparently from countries including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaking on BBC2's Newsnight, he said: "Sheikh Osama bin Laden offered to the British public and the UK people at large an offer of ceasefire.

"He said if they rolled up against the Government, brought the troops home, he promised not to attack them. But unfortunately, the stiff upper British lip became hard-headed and we saw what took place on July 7."

Abu Izzadeen, who is British-born but of Jamaican origin, and who converted to Islam when he was 17, would not denounce the bombings, which he described as "mujahideen activity".

db: Abu Izzadeen is referring to the Bin Laden tape of April 2004. He will be vilified in the UK press for these remarks, which is nothing new - in an interview with the Guardian in October 2000 he said 'I have been with the Islamic movement since the day I embraced Islam, eight years ago, and I am willing to die for it.'

He said that he had been trained in Britain, but also in the Islamic camps in Pakistan: 'In Islam, when we say training, we mean military training. The camps inside the UK prepare people with physical training and martial arts, and if they can obtain weapons they use them for training.

'When we talk about jihad, we are not talking about harsh words, we are talking about training in bomb-making and strategy.' See Britons trained for jihad