Daily Telegraph, 1 March 10: Sir Ian Blair signed a formal agreement with an Islamic extremist to treat him as the Metropolitan Police’s “principal” representative of the Muslim community, it can be disclosed. The activist, Azad Ali, was accepted by the Met as a trusted interlocutor. The force also agreed to give him information on forthcoming anti-terror raids. – Mr Ali has previously justified the killing of British troops in Iraq, believes al Qaeda is a “myth,” and has praised a key mentor of Osama bin Laden.

Mr Ali signed the deal, a copy of which has been seen by the Daily Telegraph, in his capacity as the then chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum – a body closely linked to the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph a Labour minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, accused the IFE of infiltrating the Labour Party and British politics along the lines of the far-Left Militant Tendency in the 1980s. The IFE believes in jihad, sharia law and the transformation of Britain into an Islamic state. It will be the subject of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary tonight. . . .

. . . . Mr Ali, who is also a senior official of the IFE, has a strong track record of extremism. Last year, by which time he had become the MSF’s treasurer, he was suspended from his job as a civil servant after praising Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s key mentor. Writing on his blog on the IFE website, he described Azzam as one of the “few Muslims who promote the understanding of the term jihad in its comprehensive glory” as both a doctrine of “self-purification” and of “warfare.” He then quoted Azzam’s son, approvingly, as saying: “If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq, I would kill him because that is my obligation…I respect this as the main instruction in my religion for jihad.” . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 362–Informant Development for Law Enforcement to Fight Terrorism