English Woods a Suspected Cover for Terror

Raymond and Edith Jones are regulars at Matley Wood, a campsite near one of the suspected training locations. "This hits quite close to home," she said. (By Kevin Sullivan -- The Washington Post)

LYNDHURST, England, Sept. 12 -- Jake, an arthritic Labrador retriever, slept beneath an ancient oak tree in a warm September breeze. Ponies roamed untethered, children kicked pine cones along gravel forest paths, and Edith Jones stood outside her camper wondering how such a tranquil spot had become, according to police, a training ground for terrorists.

Yassin Mutegombwa, 22, a London resident whose family is from Uganda, was charged in court Tuesday with receiving training for terrorism on British soil, the first person to be charged under a law enacted this year. According to a statement from Scotland Yard, he received weapons training in two rural English locations, including "at a woodland area" near Jones's campsite outside this village in southwestern England in late April and early June.

"This hits quite close to home," said Jones, 45, who has been coming to Matley Wood Campsite 80 miles southwest of London for more than 20 years. She said it was hard to believe that her idyllic camp, in the heart of national forest established as a hunting area by William the Conqueror in 1079, is suddenly caught up in the global struggle against Islamic extremism.

The charges against Mutegombwa illustrate increasing worry in Britain that violent extremists are not only being recruited from the country's large Muslim population but also are being trained here. Officials say some of the training may have taken place at popular paintball fields.

A Scotland Yard spokesman on Tuesday said that domestic terror training was "clearly recognized as a problem" and that the Terrorism Act of 2006 specifically included a new broad offense of receiving training that could be used for terrorism.

Police privately said that the camps were not formal military-style camps, but rather places in the countryside where would-be terrorists gathered to bond, plan and sometimes take part in weapons training. As part of the inquiry into the July 2005 suicide attacks on the London public transit system, police have investigated a rafting trip in north Wales by two of the four bombers shortly before the attacks.

British authorities have also said that they suspect some radicals are using the sport of paintball, in which players dressed in combat uniforms shoot one another with balls filled with colored liquid, as a method of learning military-style tactics. A property owner who spoke on condition of anonymity said he had been told that police were monitoring a wooded paintball site in the Lyndhurst area.

In Northern Virginia, 11 men were recently convicted in what prosecutors called a "jihad network" that among other things involved playing paintball in wooded areas of Virginia.

Ian Horton, who runs the Paintball Park in Landford, a few miles north of the Matley Wood camp, said he recalled no suspicious customers at his park and said police would be wasting their time by watching his business for potential extremist activity. "I don't see where a terrorist gets any benefit from paintball," he said.

Peter Neumann, director of the Center for Defense Studies at King's College in London, said "in one sense it's surprising" that young Muslims would engage in terror training in the English countryside. But with 60 million people on an island the size of Minnesota, he said, there are still places to go off and not be seen.

During the court case of radical cleric Abu Hamza Masri, who was convicted this year of inciting murder and racial hatred, Neumann said, evidence was presented that he would take followers out to the countryside for "camping trips" where they could "try out new weapons, engage in physical exercise and receive religious indoctrination." Neumann said those who excelled in British camps were then sent on to Afghanistan and Pakistan for "serious military training."

Mutegombwa was charged with three counts of receiving training that could be used for terrorism. His younger brother Hassan Mutegombwa was charged with procuring money for terrorism.