LONDON: A busy, blooming British capital, long criticised by governments around the world as 'Londonistan', home to 'terrorists of every sort', stopped to search its soul within hours of the contemptuous allegation levelled at it by Zacarias Moussaoui's mother: "Life in London made my boy a terrorist". Even as the 37-year-old French-Moroccan became the only person to be charged and convicted in the US in connection with 9/11, Moussaoui's mother, Aicha al-Wafi, repeated a charge leveled at London by the French counter-intelligence service, DST.
London and the British authorities, the DST alleged, was far too permissive to extremist visitors from other lands in the fatal countdown to 9/11. It is an oft-repeated criticism, notably by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak; the Saudi authorities and others.
On Wednesday night, even as Moussaoui was sentenced in America to life imprisonment without parole, his mother damagingly fuelled further criticism of London: "I would say that England is responsible for many things because it allowed this fever to spread around the country," al-Wafi told broadcasters across the Western world.
"These young people go to England, and then they scream hatred and vengeance in front of mosques. They (British) let the fever spread."
Moussaoui's brother, Abd-Samad, added with fateful emphasis: "I believe that Britain has fed a snake at its bosom, and has been bitten by the snake."
The allegations have restarted a debate London would have preferred to leave untouched. Many believe the roots of Moussaoui's radicalism lie in the seven years he spent in London with extremist so-called 'preachers of hate' free to peddle their ideology of violence and jehad.
The preacher of the mosque Moussaoui attended admits London had a strange effect on the Frenchman.
