Butt Nailed at Airport

Hassan Butt, that is.

Here we have a guy neck-deep in terror-related activity, but since he claims now to be an author and no longer a radical, he gets to walk around freely.

Until today. Hmm, maybe this renouncing jihad business was just BS. Who would think he was lying?

A muslim author who admits being a former al-Qaida recruiter was today being questioned by anti-terror police.

Hassan Butt, who penned a book on his terrorist past - was detained at Manchester Airport yesterday afternoon.

Mr Butt, 31, is understood to have arrived at Terminal 2 and bought a ticket to Lahore, Pakistan, 45 minutes before the Pakistan International Airlines flight was due to leave.

Just a spur of the moment weekend triip, I'm sure.

He is being questioned by Greater Manchester's regional counter terrorism unit. Since his arrest, police have searched his home in north Manchester and two other properties nearby and two cars were last night taken away for forensic examination.

A police spokesman said: "A 31-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of terrorist activity and officers were involved in searching three addresses."

Mr Butt has renounced a past in which he admitted raising tens of thousands of pounds for terror networks. He has also spoken of his determination to work against extremism.

During an interview with BBC's Newsnight last month, he described helping hundreds of British recruits receive weapons training in Pakistan and Afghanistan in autumn 2001.

He also told that his network helped more than 600 young British Muslims go out to fight with the Taliban against American and British forces.

Mr Butt, who has previously been arrested twice under the Terrorism Act, told the Manchester Evening News in 2004 of wanting to become a martyr before he reached 40.

But the high-profile author says he completely changed his mind about terrorism following the 7/7 attacks in London.

He told Newsnight in April: "I realised that the Jihadi network was not killing for the sake of Islam, it was killing for the sake of causing terror and causing havoc."

Naturally, many gullible people lapped it up.

Man, some people are so naive.

Here he is last year duping 60 Minutes.

There seems to be some confusion about his age. In the 60 Minutes item it says he's 26. A year later, the Daily Mail article says he's 31.

Do we even know for sure who this guy is and how old he is?

Meanwhile, the crack investigate team at the BBC simply say a man was arrested. Nothing like digging for details.