Exclusive by Danielle Wainwright
British National Party chairman and North West MEP Nick Griffin has sensationally claimed that terrorist cells are actively recruiting in areas of Greater Manchester.
Griffin also said a recent acid attack in Oldham was carried out to send a message to the British Government not to intervene in the ongoing civil war in Syria.
The outspoken politician added that he felt arming the Free Syrian Army was wrong and warned Britain to learn of the mistakes made in 2003 when Tony Blair’s government sent troops into Iraq to aid the United States’ ‘war on terror’.
During a wide-ranging interview, set up after Griffin had commented on MM’s story of the horrific acid attack on a man in Oldham, the North West MEP said that young Muslims were getting disaffected with the UK’s actions in the Middle East
“The problem is that if cities and towns in the North West such as Oldham have a disaffected Muslim population then there will be a lot of youngsters who are angry,” he said.
“When they look at Britain’s involvement with the United States and Afghanistan, and see that they are killing people with drone attacks in Pakistan as well as realising that these are the people that the UK government are helping to kill, then of course they are going to be disaffected and of course these feelings will spread.
“These youngsters aren’t the type of people to mastermind an acid attack; you only have to spend a few weeks talking to them in the middle of Manchester to see that they are angry that no money is being spent on their communities and are easily influenced by others.”
Griffin blames the UK government for allowing mosques, often funded by wealthy Middle Eastern factions, to preach ‘hard lined anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-rights of women’ through the Wahhabi faith of Islam.
“If that is gripped by one community it is obviously going to have an effect on others,” he added.
“This is not just about poverty, when we look at most of the people involved in terrorist plots in the UK they are often well educated. This is fundamentally, more than anything else, an ideology religious issue and the British government is doing nothing to address it.
“The government and UK Muslim leaders need to get a grip and simply lobby the arms and money coming from Saudi Arabia where you have a government which is hell-bent on destroying Western values.
“In a place like Oldham, where the working class were employed in the cotton mills and globalisation took its toll closing the mills and leaving many out of work as there were no more jobs left to do, Muslims were brought in to be exploited.
“The problem is that no one cares about the poor parts of Oldham even if you are white working class, Pakistani or Bangladeshi.
“Young lads are sitting round with nothing to do and they obviously feel alienated and when there is not enough money to go around the poor parts of the North West obviously tensions are going to rise.
“This then leads to what you can only describe as religious and racial hatred and it is exactly the same mentally which leads to English lads beating up people on a Friday night on the back streets of Oldham if they go down the wrong area or what leads to people becoming the victims of an acid attack.”
Griffin’s experiences in Syria revealed to him an anti-Western government sentiment particularly in the capital Damascus where he claimed all sorts of different religious groups such as Sikhs, Muslims and Christians are all ‘absolutely free to practice and worship side by side’.
“There is no ill feeling there against the population of the West as it is pro-government but there is a great deal of resentment towards the governments in the West such as Britain and the United States for financing and arming organ-eating jihadist rebels with the mentality of people who killed Lee Rigby and blew themselves up in London on July 7 2005.
“The rebels are the ones who take Western journalists hostage and who execute people just for what they are, I actually met and spoke to captured rebel fighters who make no bones about the fact that in Syria they want to attack us in Britain.
“More shockingly, serving soldiers have told me personally about hearing ‘North West’ accents on Taliban radio intercepts.”
Yet it seems that the anti-Western government sentiment in Syria, Griffin claims, has not only spread to the UK but to the far reaches of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
The acid attack of two British girls, Katie Gee and Kirstie Trup, as they returned from a dinner sent shockwaves across the globe is, as Griffin claims, a direct message from Islamists to Western governments.
He said: “Attacking western girls is partly because of the Blair government making us go into Iraq and committing war crimes of epic proportions.
“This has grave consequences, I recently read an Italian newspaper article by one of the journalists who was captured and held for five months by rebels of the Free Syrian Army. He said that the way they treated him was clear that they were taking pleasure out of having power and being able to do this to a ‘rich Westerner.’ And the West haven’t even entered the country.
“The thing is if we end up helping the rebels overthrow the Assad regime and ensure that chemical weapons are seized then they risk falling back into the hands of people who will use them in Britain that is a guaranteed fact.
“On the other hand if we help rebels to win, British and American troops cannot prevent those weapons falling into the wrong hands and taking aircraft missiles to use on flights flying over Manchester.
“If we ever send troops in to secure those weapons then immediately Jihadists will be armed and trained and at that point there will be an enormous added risk of what they call the Afghanistan Blowback.
“If you train and arm jihadist rebels because it is useful to use them overseas against perceived terrorists like the Russians in Afghanistan and Syria as well then you really can’t complain if they turn round and use those same weapons against you.
“The British government should not help the rebels to win in Syria.”
The Ministry of Defence refused to comment on Griffin’s claims last night.
Image courtesy of BBC News via Youtube, with thanks.
For more on this story and many others, follow Mancunian Matters on Twitter and Facebook.
