UK teenager reveals how he was trained for jihad

London, May 17 (ANI): A teenager has revealed how he was recruited and trained to be a suicide bomber by Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists in Britain.

The youth was first approached by Islamists at a mosque in south London that was used by the failed 21/7 bombers, and indoctrinated at a secret network of squats.

The then 15-year-old was the youngest of about 50 recruits who were shown "martyrdom" videos and encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive terrorist training.

"They showed us a jihadist video with the martyrdom flags behind the guy speaking, and the message I got was that I should prepare myself for martyrdom. That was the ultimate purpose of what these men were doing: training people up to carry out operations in the UK,"he Sunday Times quoted Adam, as saying.

"It was quite shocking to me. I started to think, 'Well, hold on a second, I don't want to kill anybody. Yeah, I've got anger inside me, but this isn't the right way to deal with this'," he added.

Adam, 18, whose real name is being withheld to protect his safety, is now enrolled in a rehabilitation programme for would-be terrorists.

Eldest of seven children, whose Algerian father had died when he was just eight, found stability in his new friends' talk of Muslim brotherhood.

"You'll go to pray and there'll be small groups of people just away from the main group in the mosque having their own discussion, talking about jihad and all these types of things," said the south London teenager.

"They started talking to me about what's going on in Iraq and about how all the people are dying and then they started inviting me to religious talks," he added.

The Stockwell mosque had previously been attended by Muktar Ibrahim and Hussain Osman, two of the four men who failed in their attempt to carry out suicide bombings on London's transport network on July 21, 2005 - two weeks after the 7/7 attacks which killed 52 commuters.

Adam is happy that he didn't become a terrorist: "I feel very grateful that I didn't go down that road. Now I want an office job." (ANI)