A High Court ruling overturning attempts to stop the Egyptian-born imam being sent to the US was “a testament to the reality of the west’s vicious war against Islam and the Muslims”, al-Shabaab said.
For this, the group said on its official Twitter feed, Britain faced another terror attack that would be deadlier than those on July 7 and July 21, 2005.
“Britain will pay the heftiest price for its brazen role in the war against Islam and endless brutality against innocent Muslims,” al-Shabaab’s press office tweeted on Monday.
“We remind the British government that we’re a nation that doesn’t tolerate oppression [and] their actions will be repaid in retaliatory measure.
“The nightmare that surreptitiously looms on British shores is bound to eclipse the horrors of 7/7 and 21/7 combined, insh’allah.” Security agencies have long feared that terror cells trained in Somalia, some comprising British citizens, were planning attacks in Britain.
There was no official change to the threat level following the al-Shabaab tweets, one security source said, but he added that “vigilance was already at near-enough the highest possible level”.
Al-Shabaab has been pushed out of almost all of the most strategically important territory that it held in Somalia, including Mogadishu, the capital, and Kismayo, the main port on the country’s southern Indian Ocean coast.
Analysts now fear that its hardline leaders will regroup into a smaller but more committed force of radicals, to carry out attacks on Somalia’s government, international aid agencies, and beyond the country’s borders.
Hamza and four other terrorism suspects were extradited to the US earlier this month after the High Court rejected their last-ditch attempts to block their removal.
A legal saga that dragged on for more than a decade in the courts of Britain and Europe finally ended Sir John Thomas, President of the Queen’s Bench Division, and Mr Justice Ouseley dismissed the men’s pleas to be allowed a stay of extradition.
Al-Shabaab’s tweets came as three British Muslim men went on trial on Monday accused of planning a separate string of bombings that prosecutors said could have been deadlier than the 7/7 attacks on London. The three men have all denied the charges.
