A top terror cop has warned that radical Islamists are using rural Wales as a training camp.
The Wales Extremism and Counter Terrorism Unit (WECTU) says it is aware that locations in Ceredigion, Powys and Pembrokeshire have been used for training purposes.
Detective Constable Gareth Jones, a counter-terrorism officer with the unit has warned that issues surrounding terrorism were not confined to large cities.
He said it was vital that residents informed authorities of any intelligence and information regarding terrorist activities, saying that fighting terrorism was not just down to the police.
DC Jones said a link between Michael Adebowale, one of the men convicted of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, and the former European Institute of Human Sciences at Highmead, near Llanybydder was well known.
Adebowale studied Arabic at the institute which is understood to have been set up by Iraqi clerics.
He said: “This chap attended the Institute for Human Sciences for quite some time.
“Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Powys have been used for radicalisation training.
“These people do turn up and take part in seemingly ordinary activities, but they do have an ulterior motive.
“This does happen in Ceredigion.”
Islamic terrorism in Wales stretches back before the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.
Three years before that day the hook-handed cleric at the Finsbury Park mosque was sending extremists to the Brecon Beacons to train.
And two of the 7/7 London bombers bonded on a white water rafting trip in North Wales in 2005.
In December 2010 it was not terrorists coming into Wales, but homegrown extremists living in the capital Cardiff, when three men were arrested for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
The three would-be terrorists from Cardiff were arrested as part of an Al-Qaeda inspired gang who plotted a ‘Mumbai-style’ series of terror attacks on Britain.
Omar Latif, 28, Gurukanth Desai, 30, and Abdul Miah, 25, were photographed holding a series of secret meetings with Mohammed Chowdhury and Shah Rahman in a country park in Wales.
