LONDON — The British government promised yesterday to press ahead quickly with tough new anti-terrorism legislation in what amounts to a tacit admission that for years it had been too tolerant of Islamist hate speech.
The most controversial measure will establish a new crime of “indirect incitement” of terrorism, which lawmakers said could also make the “glorification” of terrorism punishable by law.
Prime Minister Tony Blair promised, even before any legislation is passed, to expel from Britain or refuse entry to “anybody who incites violence here or abroad.”
But until now, authorities have felt powerless to make such expulsions.
The chief constable of the Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair, last week complained that the police could not charge people known to be preparing for attacks, such as by assembling dangerous chemicals.
Bomb-making chemicals were found in a bathtub in the apartment of a biochemist who left for his native Egypt shortly before the July 7 bomb attacks that killed 56 persons in London. Egypt has not handed the man over to British police, arguing there is no evidence to connect him with the bombings.
Britain’s main internal security organization, MI-5, came under fire yesterday with the publication of excerpts from a top-secret terrorism assessment made only three weeks before the bombings.
“At present, there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the” United Kingdom, said the report by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, which was obtained by the New York Times.
In response to the bombings, MI-5 plans to set up an office in Leeds, the town in northern England that was home to three of the four bombers. The agency will also open operations in seven other locations with high concentrations of Muslims, security sources confirmed.
Muslim leaders who met with Mr. Blair at his official residence yesterday agreed to set up a “task force” to prevent vulnerable young Muslims from coming under the influence of agitators.
They said afterward they accepted the need for new laws and greater police surveillance, but warned that oppressive policing would prompt a backlash among the country’s 1.7 million Muslims.
The Muslim leaders promised the prime minister that they would take concrete steps to deal with “serious internal shortcomings” that, they conceded, led to the flourishing of extremists who could become suicide bombers and killers in the country.
Their meeting was preceded by a fatwa delivered on Parliament’s lawns by more than 500 Islamic sheiks declaring suicide bombing in Britain to be “haraam” — strictly forbidden.
However, the announcement was not universally welcomed.
“We should not be condemning or apologizing. Tony Blair was asking for it,” declared one alienated Muslim youth on national television.
Other Muslim activists spoke for the first time about their community’s failures.
“It’s part of the implosion of Muslim society worldwide,” said Fuad Nahdi, publisher of Q News, a youth-oriented magazine.
Community activist Muhammad Yusif said on national television: “God will make us accountable for our failure to prevent these suicide bombers.”
He warned of a Western backlash that “would make it more difficult to end the occupation of Islamic countries.”
Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohamed, whose activities had led to several arrests, emerged briefly yesterday from a self-imposed isolation after the London bombings.
“I blame the British government, and I blame the British people. They are the ones who should be blamed,” he was quoted as saying in the London Evening Standard.
He announced last night that he had fallen sick and canceled other planned interviews.
Sheik Bakri’s small but publicity-seeking Al Muhajiroun group had glorified the September 11, 2001, attacks in posters plastered across London and had given vociferous support to the concept of a worldwide jihad.
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