5 Dec 2007

You Can't Make This Stuff Up #321

According to The Times of the UK:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

Mr Hamid denies providing weapons training, five charges of soliciting murder and three of providing training for terrorism. The other men deny a series of charges related to training.It becomes downright bizarre, as if someone was trying to parody the perfect genteel, clueless BBC leftist twit-of-the-year. The Times reports on the BBC producer, Phil Rees, take on Hamid, the terrorist trainer:

He said: “I think he had a comic touch and he represented a strand within British Muslims. I took it as more like a rather Steptoe and Son figure rather than seriously persuasive. I saw him as a kind of Cockney comic.” Mr Rees, who now works for the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, gave Mr Hamid a signed copy of his book "Dining With Terrorists".