UK airline bomb suspects 'radicalised in weeks'

London, Jan 25: A group of British Muslims suspected ofplotting to blow up U.S.-bound airliners flying from Britain had beenradicalised in just weeks or months, Britain's top police officer saidtoday.

British detectives announced last August they had foiled a suicide bomb plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives.

Officers have charged 15 people over the suspected plot withoffences including conspiracy to murder and planning acts of terrorism.The suspects are due to go on trial next year.

''One of the really shocking things ... is the apparent speed withwhich young, reasonably affluent, some reasonably well-educated,British-born people were converted,'' London police chief Ian Blairtold a conference on Islamophobia.

He said the suspects had been converted ''from what would appearto be ordinary lives in a matter of some weeks and months, not years,to a position where they were allegedly prepared to commit suicide andmurder thousands of people''.

British authorities are trying to understand what has caused agrowth in extremism among the country's 1.8 million Muslims,dramatically exemplified by the July 2005 suicide bomb attacks onLondon's transport system by four British Islamists who killedthemselves and 52 other people.

Last November, Britain's domestic spy chief Eliza Manningham-Buller said agents were tracking some 1,600 suspects.

Blair said the ''extreme view of one austere strand'' of Islam was proving powerful.

''It seems to be very potent,'' he said, repeating his warningthat the threat to Britain was ''growing, and extremely grave'' and theconspiracies were growing in ''number and gravity''.

He said he was concerned about recent opinion polls taken amongstBritish Muslims which found support in ''principle at least'' forterrorist action.

A poll of Islamic students and Muslims generally found that 4 and6 percent of those questioned thought the July 7 London bombings werejustified -- the equivalent of about 80,000 and 120,000 people, Blairsaid.

''I'm not suggesting that means there are that many terrorists.

It does however indicate the power of the ideology involved.''Blair said it was vital to get over the message of ''Britishness''based on values of tolerance, fairness and respect for faiths andtraditions of others.

''We have to get over the message this is not a clash of civilisations.''

Reuters>