http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=azHPHez0q.CI&refer=ukU.K. Police Trained at Islamic School at Center of Terror Probe By Nick AllenSept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. police officers were given ``diversity training'' at an Islamic school southeast of London that's now at the center of a terrorism investigation. Anti-Terrorist Branch police from London raided the private Jameah Islameah school in East Sussex and in the same inquiry arrested 14 people in London Sept. 1 and 2. The county's police force said its own officers visited the school as many as 15 times for training to improve their awareness of Muslim culture. London police said the raids aren't tied to the 2005 London bombings or arrests Aug. 10 over an alleged plot to bomb planes. Police today are searching buildings and woodland on the campus, a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police said in a phone interview. Police divers also will be brought in to scour a lake on the grounds of the school near Rotherfield, in East Sussex, 45 miles (74 kilometers) southeast of London. Officers said they will also look through documents and computers and that their investigation at the school may take several weeks. ``We are not embarrassed by our involvement with the school but, inevitably, this will have to be reviewed in the light of the weekend's events,'' Sussex Police said in an e-mailed statement. The campus was brought to the attention of U.K. authorities in 1999, when Yemen's ambassador to the U.K. alleged it was used to train young Islamic extremists, the Daily Telegraph reported. Police concluded at the time that the allegation was ``totally unsubstantiated,'' and then-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said there had been no breach of British law, the newspaper reported. Diversity Trainers Sussex Police today said the school was used by officers and staff for advanced training so they could themselves become diversity trainers. ``This has involved a series of one-day visits to the school by groups of two or three trainers on up to 15 occasions over more than a year,'' police said. A police spokesman said he couldn't immediately provide further details of the arrangements between the school and the force. A court granted officers warrants to detain three of the 14 suspects for two more days and the remaining 11 can be questioned until Sept. 8, the Metropolitan Police said today. The suspects are being held at London's high-security Paddington Green police station. They include Abu Abdullah, 42, a former aide to Abu Hamza al-Masri, British media including the London-based Times reported. Hamza, the former imam of Finsbury Park mosque in London, was jailed for seven years in February after being convicted of inciting murder. Twelve of the suspects were arrested at a Chinese restaurant called the Bridge to China Town, in the Borough district of London. The other two were arrested elsewhere in the capital. All were detained on suspicion of the ``commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism,'' police said. `Islamic Environment' Jameah Islameah, a school for Muslim boys age 11-16, charges 900 pounds a year ($1,714) including room and board and is set in 54 acres of countryside, according to its Web site. It offers courses including memorizing and reciting the Koran and aims to produce ``pious scholars.'' It also offers accommodation for single people seeking a ``strict Islamic environment.'' In December the school had only nine boys registered as students, according to a report by inspectors from the government's Office for Standards in Education who spent three days there as part of a routine check. ``Jameah Islameah school does not provide a satisfactory education for its pupils,'' the inspectors said in the report. Jameah Islameah was set up in 2003, the schools agency said. The arrests and search of the campus follow months of surveillance by police and the domestic spy agency MI5, the London force said. To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Allen in London at
