Waheed Ahmed, the son of a Labour councillor in Rochdale, has been arrested by anti-terror police in Birmingham. He was detained this morning after being returned from Turkey following a suspected attempt to join Islamic terrorist groups in Syria.
Greater Manchester Police said in a statement: “In the early hours of Tuesday, 14 April 2015, a 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of Commission, Preparation or Instigation of acts of Terrorism at Birmingham Airport.”
According to the Mail on Sunday, Ahmed is allegedly a member of the terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Yesterday London Breitbart revealed the group is thought to be operating along side the Nusra Front in Syria.
The Nusra Front – the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda – controls the Syrian side of the stretch of the border where he and eight extended family members attempted to cross.
Ahmed is a politics student at Manchester University, where Hizb ut-Tahrir are active.
His father, Councillor Shakil Ahmed, said in a statement: “It’s a total mystery to me why he’s there, as I was under the impression he was on a work placement in Birmingham.
“My son is a good Muslim and his loyalties belong to Britain, so I don’t understand what he’s doing there.”
Ahmed was photographed smiling and laughing when detained in Turkey and friends of the Ahmed family have said that his attitudes and behaviour had “changed” in recent months and become a “cause for concern.”
The group of nine from Rochdale was first detained on the 31st of March in the Turkish town of Hayat, within walking distance from Syria.
The group included five adults and four children. The minors ranged from a one-year-old baby to an 11-year-old, accompanied by two women, aged 47 and 22, and three men aged 24, 22 and 21.