BEIRUT, 12 August 2005 — Radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is being investigated in Britain for his remarks on the London bombings, was detained yesterday in Lebanon moments after giving an interview to Future Television. In the interview, the cleric said he did not intend on returning to Britain and denied having any links to Al-Qaeda.
Bakri, who holds a Lebanese passport, said he left Britain of his own free will and that he had been thinking of returning to Lebanon, which he fled during the war in 1981.
“I left Britain on my own accord though I have not been accused of anything there or in Lebanon... but the London attacks are the reason I have returned,” Bakri declared.
As he left the studios of Future TV in West Beirut after his interview, the 47-year-old cleric was detained in what security sources said was “a routine arrest to determine his reasons for being in Lebanon.”
“He was arrested as soon as he left the (Future TV) building after the interview,” said Future Television reporter and editor Salman Sarieddine. “The General Security was waiting for him outside and took him away in the car. They hadn’t seen the interview, and we were not warned beforehand that this could happen.”
Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi later said Bakri was arrested as a “precautionary measure.”
The British Embassy in Lebanon said it had not issued any arrest warrant on Bakri, a necessary requirement if the cleric was to be held at Britain’s request.
“We made no request for his arrest, nor for his extradition,” British Ambassador to Lebanon James Watt told Arab News. “As far as I am concerned, this is a very simple story — it is a Lebanese citizen who returned to Lebanon and has been arrested by the Lebanese police. We have nothing to do with it and it’s not in our place to comment on what has happened.”
Bakri is regarded as an extremist in Britain, where he has lived for 20 years. He left for Lebanon on Saturday after British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged a crackdown on hard-line Islamists in the wake of the July 7 suicide bombings in London that killed 56 people and the failed copycat attempt two weeks later.
Since then, speculation has mounted that Bakri and other extremist preachers could face a range of criminal charges from treason to incitement to kill.
“I will not go back to London,” the cleric said, despite the fact that he is scheduled to undergo heart surgery there next month. “If the British government says I am wanted in Britain, I will gladly return my residency papers. But if I am not accused of anything, I would like to return as a tourist or a visitor.”
Bakri also vehemently denied having any links to Al-Qaeda, which he dismissed as a “media creation,” with no concrete presence on the ground.
Bakri’s neighbors in Beirut’s Nueiri district said they did not know of his presence in the neighborhood until he showed up to visit his mother and aunt. One neighbor was quoted by Asharq Al-Awsat as saying that Bakri took his family from Beirut to another location at Mount Lebanon to avoid the media.
