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LONDON (Reuters) – A report that a Nigerian who tried to down a U.S. airliner joined al Qaeda as a student in Britain has raised concerns about radical Islamists on UK campuses in a test for authorities trying to balance security and free speech.

Radicalization is a growing security worry after the botched December 25 airliner attack, a December 29 Afghanistan suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees and the November 5 killing of 13 at a U.S. army base by a gunman linked to a Yemen-based preacher.

The December 25 attack stirred fears that a new generation of UK militants has emerged capable of rebuilding London’s 1990s role as Europe’s Islamist hub, but this time using private networks and campus debating societies rather than high profile mosques.

Rshad al-Alimi, Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security, told reporters in Sanaa the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was recruited by al Qaeda in Britain, where he studied from 2005-08 at University College London (UCL) and became president of the student Islamic Society.

Peter Neumann, an expert on Radicalization who teaches at London’s King’s College, said pro-al Qaeda militants were present in some British campuses but disentangling their activities from legitimate student debate was very difficult.

STUDENTS EXPERIMENT WITH RADICAL IDEAS

“Universities are places where young people experiment with radical ideas as part of growing up. It’s normal. It’s part of what university is about and quite legitimate,” he told Reuters.

“But extremists do join some Islamic debating societies on some campuses because there you will find young people, sometimes a bit vulnerable, perhaps living away from home among white non-Muslims for the first time and in need of friendship.”

Home Secretary (interior minister) Alan Johnson said this week Britain’s MI5 security service was aware of Abdulmutallab when he was studying in London although he was not seen as someone engaged with violent extremism.

UCL has set up an independent review of Abdulmutallab’s time at the university. A university lobby group, Universities UK, is examining how all universities can protect academic freedom whilst taking “appropriate action” to prevent violent extremism.

“There is a narrow line that we must walk between securing freedom of speech on the one hand, and safeguarding against its illegal exercise on the other, such as in the incitement of religious or racial hatred,” Malcolm Grant, president of University College, London, wrote in Times Higher Education.

One vocal critic of radical Islamist debating societies at British universities said the Yemeni report was plausible.

“There is a probability bordering on certainty that that is true,” Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University Center for Security and Intelligence Studies, told Reuters.

“There is a serious problem on our campuses. Yes, Abdulmutallab got his bomb and his training in Yemen, but it is inconceivable that he left the UK for Yemen and then suddenly decided he wanted to be trained by al Qaeda.”

Analysts say the debate over campus Islamists has been complicated by a heated political atmosphere over Afghanistan.

An Islamist group, Islam4UK, caused widespread outrage this month when it announced plans to stage a protest march against Afghan civilian deaths in an English town that hosts funeral processions for British troops killed in Afghanistan.

SCAREMONGERING

Moazzem Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee who has spoken to many university Islamic groups, dismissed charges of al Qaeda campus activity as “the worst kind of scaremongering.”

He said some teachers were already being pressured to inform on their students in what he called a betrayal of trust.

Omar Ashour, an Exeter University expert on Islamist movements, said the debate over Islamist agitation on campuses was blurring a distinction between religious Radicalization and a further step — operational involvement in acts of violence.

Cracking down on debating clubs could backfire by stoking extremism. “The answer is not crack down on debate but to keep the debate going and explore what the issues are,” he said.

He said universities in Arab countries tended to be closely monitored by their governments, with intelligence services sometimes going so far as to select teaching staff. The result had often been even stronger Islamist Radicalization.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)