Timeline: Operation Crevice

September, 1998

Omar Khyams political interests develop
Crawley teenager Omar Khyam begins his Alevels. He becomes more interested in his Muslim heritage and the disputed region of Kashmir. Khyam starts to go to the local mosque but is also attracted to political study circles run by radical group alMuhajiroun. Speakers there talk of Muslims suffering around the world. By coincidence some of Khyam's extended family in Pakistan are in the military with working knowledge of the Kashmir conflict.

18 January, 2000

Khyams secret trip to Pakistan
Now 18 Khyam flies to Pakistan without his family's prior permission. He had told his mother he was on a college trip to France. He spends approximately three months with Kashmiri militant groups in hidden mountain camps receiving guerrilla warfare training. Why did he go During a 1999 family holiday to Pakistan he had seen open street recruiting by militants and had asked them how he could get involved.

March, 2000

Working at a tiling shop
Khyam gets a steady job at the Gatwick Road branch of Topps Tiles. His manager is Waheed Mahmood a codefendant in the trial. The teenager had met Mahmood at an event at Crawley mosque in either 1998 or 1999. Mahmood was already involved in the local Islamic political scene. Mahmood leaves the job later in the year and eventually moves to Pakistan.

September, 2000

Khyam returns to college but fails to sit final ALevels

March, 2001

Omar Khyam meets Salahuddin Amin.
Khyam's politics and association with alMuhajiroun lead him to make contact with Islamist activists organising in Luton. Waheed Mahmood is already involved in meetings with young men at a makeshift centre away from the town's central mosque. Salahuddin Amin is among the first men Khyam meets in Luton. Khyam also meets two young men who later die in a US bombing in Afghanistan. Khyam gets more heavily involved in fundraising for Kashmiri and Afghan causes.

28 June, 2001

Khyam meets the Taleban
Omar Khyam returns to Pakistan to meet up with friends from the Kashmiri training camp. Khyam is taking on a key role among British activists as a courier ferrying cash raised in the UK or legally obtainable army surplus gear into territories where the Taleban and alQaeda are active. He crosses over into Afghanistan for the first time and meets Taleban members whom he later says are amazing people.

11 September, 2001

Al Qaeda members attack New York and Washington

September, 2001

Mohammed Babar quits the USA
Mohammed Babar an AmericanPakistani who lives in New York leaves for Pakistan. He intends to join the Taleban in anticipation of a USled invasion of Afghanistan. Babar is a member of alMuhajiroun in New York and spends five days in England en route. He stays with UK members of the organisation before heading for their office in Pakistan.