The terrorist leader who studied in North-East

The revelation that Ramadan Abdullah Shallah studied at Durham University is not the region's only link with the terrorist atrocities last week.

As long ago as 1998, The Northern Echo revealed how SAS troops taught Afghan guerillas at secret northern training camps.

But the news that Shallah studied at one of Britain's top universities will only add to fears that Islamic fundamentalists have succeeded in infiltrating countries throughout the Western world.

Shallah has been the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for the last six years and is officially listed by the US as a high-profile "specially designated terrorist".

But in the late 1980s he was an unremarkable postgraduate student at Durham University, leaving with a PhD in economics in 1991.

Contemporaries there remember him as being good academically, although there was nothing extraordinary about his activities there.

Although actively involved with Palestinian issues and the Moslem Society, he did not appear at the time to be involved with anything untoward, or be marked out as a future leader of any sort.

After gaining his doctorate, he moved to the US, becoming a lecturer at the University of South Florida in Tampa, leaving in early 1995.

He took over as the "secretary general" of Islamic Jihad in late 1995 following the assassination of the previous leader - with whom Shallah is now thought to have founded the group as young students in Egypt.

In Tampa, Shallah was also the director of the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, known as Wise, a group claiming to be involved in academic research.

And after his sudden emergence as leader of Islamic Jihad, FBI and other agents raided his old offices in Tampa, along with those of a former colleague there.

According to US terrorism expert Steven Emerson, the colleague was the founder of Wise and an affiliated "religious charity" known as the Islamic Committee for Palestine.

The evidence the agents found proved both groups were arms of Islamic Jihad and that the front groups had links with other extremist groups worldwide.

The groups are also believed to have collaborated with those involved in the 1993 terrorist bombing at New York's World Trade Centre - the destruction of which last week has now made Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden the world's most wanted man.

And two men associated with Islamic Jihad were on the hijacked American Airlines plane which smashed on to the Pentagon last Tuesday.

Shallah, who was born on the Gaza Strip in January, 1958, is now headquartered in Damascus, Syria.

Ironically, during the early 1980s, teams of SAS soldiers set up training camps for mujahidin fighters, now loyal to Osama bin Ladin.

Special forces soldier Ken Connor confessed to The Northern Echo in 1998 that key guerillas had been smuggled into this country for training.

Falklands veteran Mr Connor, who comes from Stockton, served with the SAS from 1963 to 1986.

As well as teaching the guerillas how to fight, the North-East training camps offered tutorials on the Stinger anti-aircraft missile.

The West offered training and support to the mujahidin as part of a Western bid to stiffen resistance to invading Russian forces.

Mr Connor said: "We chose the North of England because it was the perfect place for training in peace.

"The SAS were looking for a piece of real estate where they could do pretty much whatever they wanted.

"As soldiers, they were extremely brave but they lacked organisation; that was our job."

The operation was so secret even regular soldiers from Catterick had no idea it was taking place.

"We deliberately stayed clear of places like Otterburn because they didn't give us enough privacy," he said.

About the same time as British elite forces were training the mujahidin, Osama bin Ladin was setting up his base in Afghanistan and masterminding assaults on the Russians.

If British special forces are now deployed to Afghanistan, they could end up fighting the very guerillas they helped train.

Even more worrying for the allies will be Mr Connor's revelation that the British also taught the Afghans how to use deadly Stinger missiles.

Stingers are light anti-aircraft missiles - used by America to defend the White House from attack - capable of bringing down a light aircraft or a helicopter gunship.

During the 1980s, the IRA spent years scouring the world for Stingers to no avail. However, Islamic terrorists were almost certainly aided in their search for missiles by the US Government when they were fighting the Russians.