Police raids across Britain and Europe have unearthed a link between hardcore child pornography and Islamic extremism as thousands of images of child abuse have been found on the computers of numerous suspected jihadists. It is alleged that secret messages are being encoded and embedded into child pornographic images which are then placed on secure paedophile websites and decoded by other terrorists.
The Metropolitan Police found so many child porn images on the computers of Muslim terror suspects that there was a plan to instigate a research project which would explore the link. The project was shelved, however, for the bizarre reason that the police were overwhelmed with the number of cases it was having to deal with.
The police first became aware of the link in 2006 when anti-terrorist police officers found hardcore child pornography on the PCs of two unrelated Muslim terror suspects. One of the suspects, Abdul Makim Khalisadar, was a preacher at the East London mosque who was later revealed to be the so-called Whitechapel Rapist who attacked women earlier in the year.
He was jailed for 10 years for rape but also had numerous images of child porn on his computer. These charges were allowed to lie on file. The other suspect was a young Muslim who had a few dozen child abuse images on his computer.
It appears that the problem is not just confined to Britain. Italian police found child pornography on several computers of terror suspects after raiding the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan in 2001. The Italian police believe that some images were encoded with messages. In Spain, a forthcoming trial will reveal how an Islamic terror cell downloaded thousands of child sex images and videos.
Other examples include a case in Yorkshire where child protection officers unearthed a potential nail-bomb attack and, in Salford, police officers who were investigating a Muslim chemistry student who was visiting explosives websites also found that he was downloading child pornography.
The police say it is not yet clear whether the Muslim suspects were using child sex material for their own personal gratification or as a secure way of sending coded messages. In some cases only a dozen images were found whereas in another, 40,000 child abuse images were discovered.
Stefano Dambruoso, Italys anti-terror chief, is convinced that there is nothing to worry about:
I would exclude the idea that they have paedophile tendencies. The most you can attribute to them is a relationship between men and women different from that of us Westerners, in which - as in many parts of the Arab world - wives are often very young girls of 11, 12 or 13 who because of family negotiations are given in marriage to men much older than them. But that is not paedophilia, it is a question of Arab culture.