LONDON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A man who authorities say tried to blow up a passenger jet by igniting a bomb in his shoes was associated with "extreme elements" at a London mosque and may be one of about 100 would-be suicide bombers, a British Muslim leader said Wednesday.
Richard Reid was detained after an incident in which he allegedly tried to set off explosives on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean. The 28-year-old man faces charges of assault and intimidation of the crew of American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami.
Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque in south London, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Reid attended the mosque to learn about Islam but soon fell in with what he called the "more extreme elements."
The Times newspaper said the mosque was also attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, who faces conspiracy charges in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in which hijacks jets were used in attacks on New York and Washington.
Baker said Reid converted to Islam while serving time in a British prison for minor offenses. He said Reid took the name Abdel Rahim and went to the mosque for instruction in mainstream Islam, initially taking a studious approach. But, according to Baker, Reid later expressed the view that his teachers were too "passive" in the face of perceived Western injustice.
Baker said Reid came into contact with "more extreme elements" in London's Muslim community, started wearing military gear and talking about fighting a holy war. Baker gave no details of the extremist elements.
"He said we had to revolt against the rulers of the Muslim countries, because they were not actually Muslims," Baker told the BBC. Also, he said, Reid told him Muslims who lived in Western society should make plans to revolt against and undermine it.
Baker said there were perhaps as many as 1,000 extremist Muslims in Britain, of whom at least 100 were ready to become suicide bombers.
"Those propagating the extreme views are relatively few in number but in the last four or five years we have witnessed that number grow quite frighteningly," Baker said.
"They prey on impressionable youth, those who are new to Islam, those whose understanding of Islam is not that advanced, and those who are quite weak in their character, and have to be led."
The Times newspaper quoted Baker as saying Reid was incapable of acting alone and was probably on a test mission for a new terrorist technique when he apparently tried to detonate C4 plastic explosive packed into his shoes. He was overpowered by passengers and crew.
According to the Times, Reid was born in Bromley, southeast London, in 1973, to an English mother and a Jamaican father. His mother came to the mosque looking for her son several months ago after he went to Pakistan and stopped communicating with his family, said the Times.
Reid arrived at the mosque as a worshipper several years ago and joined the Arabic classes there, completing the first of three books. He was proficient enough to write to fellow worshippers in Arabic when he went abroad recently.
The Times described Reid as a petty criminal with a string of convictions for street crime such as muggings, who served time in several prisons and in the Feltham Young Offender Institution in West London.
According to the newspaper, Baker described him as "an amiable, happy-go-lucky individual, always wanting to get involved in things and helping. He was very keen to learn the basics of Islam."
Baker said that Reid would have been incapable of devising the plot to blow up the aircraft over the Atlantic without help from fellow conspirators.
"No way could he do this on his own," Baker said. "He doesn't have the capacity to think: 'I'm going to get these explosives, I know where to get these explosives from, I'll put them in my shoe'.
Baker said, "He was a testing ground. If he had succeeded they would know this is a mechanism that works. If the plane had exploded there would have been very little trace of how that happened."
The mosque found Reid a job making incense sticks for Black Crescent, a company that provides employment for Muslims.
The Times said, "Reid took a path that many prisoners may be following." Muslims make up the fourth largest group of inmates in prisons in England and Wales, and their numbers doubled between 1993 and 2000. It said the figures did not reveal how many prisoners convert to another faith while serving a sentence.
