The day I met Al-Qaida supergrass in Pakistan

Sep 24 2006 Exclusive By Amardeep Bassey

THESE are the first pictures of the American Al-Qaida supergrass whose capture sparked Britain's biggest ever terror trial.

Looking studious in his metal-rimmed glasses, Mohammed Junaid Babar casually hands out leaflets at a highly-charged Islamic extremist rally in Pakistan just weeks after the 9/11 attacks.

Flanked by British-born Taliban supporters he shouts slogans praising the World Trade Center atrocity and calls for the death of American soldiers.

Little did his jihadist comrades know that five years later the former New York college drop-out, whose mother was injured in the Twin Tower attacks, would be a key prosecution witness at the Old Bailey trial.

The Sunday Mercury obtained these world exclusive pictures when I tracked Babar down to a secret hideout in Lahore, Pakistan, in November 2001.

The former parking attendant was staying with British-born Islamic firebrand Hassan Butt, who had set up a Pakistan base for British Muslims wanting to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I spent three days with the group, which also included several British Muslims who claimed they had come to train at special camps - and were ready to die for their religion.

With his cherubic looks and thick New York drawl, Babar looked conspicuously out of place in the bad-lands of northern Pakistan.

But unlike his fellow British jihadis, who were extremely reluctant to give interviews, Babar practically begged to be questioned by me.

"I'm in charge of the training camps in Peshawar," he boasted.

"There's only a few Western Muslims there at the moment but we are getting new arrivals every day.

"We teach new recruits basic survival and combat techniques. A lot of them get a big shock when they realise how tough it really is."I've done the training myself. As a good Muslim it is a religious obligation to be trained in jihad."

Babar was reluctant to give out personal details but did not hide his hatred of his American compatriots.

"America deserved 9/11 and there will be more to come," he warned.

"I have no problems killing Americans for all the suffering they inflict on Muslims across the world.

"Living in America has shown me that they are the enemy of Islam."

My initial reaction was that Babar might be an American spy because he was so keen to talk to me.

He came across as an excitable and impressionable young man. He was full of energy and constantly on one of his many mobile phones.

On the face of it he was very polite and gentle. I remember one particular evening he insisted I eat with him and said he wanted to show me what Islamic hospitality was all about.

I certainly didn't get the impression that he was an important figure or someone capable of carrying out any of the threats he and his fellow jihadists were making. In early 2004 Babar left his wife in Lahore and flew to New York where he was picked up by the FBI in Manhattan.

Agents questioned him for six days in a luxury hotel before finally arresting Babar and charging him with terrorist offences including a UK terror plot.

At about the same time anti-terrorist police in London launched Operation Crevice, resulting in the detention of six British Muslims currently standing trial for conspiring to blow up UK shopping centres, nightclubs and railway stations.

At a US court in June 2004, Babar pleaded guilty to smuggling money and military supplies to a senior member of Al-Qaida in Pakistan, setting up a jihad training camp and assisting in a bombing plot in the United Kingdom.

He also admitted to being involved in two plots to assassinate the Pakistani President Pervez Musharref.

Facing up to 70 years in jail or possible execution in Pakistan, Babar, the self-proclaimed enemy of the US, struck a deal with the FBI.

In return for potentially damning testimony against the alleged British co-conspirators, the US authorities agreed to commute his sentence to less than seven years and put him and his family on a witness protection programme.

It was under these sensational circumstances that Babar appeared in the witness box earlier this year as the star prosecution witness in the British bomb plot trial.

Wearing a plain grey pullover, Mohammed Babar gave evidence for three days giving a valuable insight into the mindset of the Western Muslims who he had met in Pakistan.

He described how he had come to the US from Pakistan, where he was born, as a two-year-old.

His family settled in the Queen's district of New York where he gradually became radicalised as a Muslim activist while doing a number of unskilled jobs.

He explained that even though his mother had survived the Al-Qaida suicide attacks on the World Trade Center, he decided a week later to travel to Pakistan to fight what he called the 'jihad' in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Once there, he explained how British Muslims he met openly talked of potential plots in the UK.

He also told how many of the potential British recruits had misconceived ideas about what jihadist training would entail.

Babar described how one would-be Western militant tried to scale a dangerous mountain "wearing Nike trainers which he hadn't even bothered fastening up with shoelace."

The Old Bailey trial continues.