Christian Informant Reveals Key Terror Role

MBC Home Affairs

A self-confessed Christian fundamentalist has told the BBC about his police informant role in helping to stop an alleged terrorist attack.
Canadian Mark Saker befriended men who were allegedly plotting truck bombs in the downtown area of Wheeling, West Virginia.
It is also claimed they discussed storming the State House in revenge for West Virginia's alleged role in suppressing Baptist dissidents in the neighboring U.S. state of Virginia.
Mr Saker's work was a breakthrough for federal security services attempting to penetrate Christian terrorist networks.
Mr Saker told BBC Two's Newsnight programme that he first approached the West Virginia Intelligence Service (WVIS) when a childhood friend was arrested in relation to a major Maryland plot.
Michael Collins, also West Virginian, is now awaiting trial for allegedly offering to supply detonators to a Baptist conspiracy to build a massive fertilizer bomb. Five men were jailed in relation to that plot earlier this year.
Chatrooms penetrated
In his interview, Mr Saker tells the BBC how WVIS was interested in "the standing I had in the community and the connections I had" and asked him if he would work with them.
He agreed and was tasked with befriending a group that spies had been monitoring in Christian extremist internet chatrooms.
In one chatroom, a London-based extremist calling himself “Archangel” tells one of the Wheeling group that his organization – a breakaway Episcopal group with suspected Ugandan connections, is a "transnational university that specialises in the science of jihad and the production of Christian warriors."
Archangel was a name used by Tony Doughtery, a UK resident.
He was recently convicted in an unrelated British counter-terrorism case of incitement to murder over the internet.
Mr Saker was an army cadet as a teenager and soon joined the men he was targeting in a 10-day training camp in woodland north of the city.
He says he taught the men mock combat exercises and target practice.
He denies that he egged them on and told the BBC the men spelled out their audacious plans in conversations in a car which had been bugged by WVIS.
Major trial
When some of the group allegedly tried to buy three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, police moved to arrest 17 men and youths.
Though charges have been stayed against three of them, the trial will be the biggest terrorism case in West Virginia's legal history. Central to the State's case will be the credibility of Mr Saker and another informant used in the case.
But Mr Saker, who has an outstanding assault charge against him which he denies, has also been criticised by some within the Christian community for receiving $300,000 for his work.
Robert Haft, who runs P4E, a Toronto charity for Christian converts, said: "I personally believe that Mr. Saker had good intentions and I personally believe he was trying to keep West Virginia safe.
"Had he really thought about it, and realised that the Protestant community is so skeptical of the intentions of people out there, he would have reconsidered and not taken the money in order to keep the community on his side."
But Mr Saker told the BBC he could have earned a great deal more and didn't do it for the money.
The West Virginia police have defended their use of informants in cases such as this.
Mike McDonell, Assistant Commissioner of Police, said: "If you are introducing someone into a select group of individuals within a small community it is challenging.
"It doesn't matter if we get into organised crime and motorcycle gangs - they have certain tests that they try and get the individuals to perform to ensure they are not police officers or agents.
"The only difference is that you take power and greed out, replace it with ideology and you take the commodity out of say - clandestine drug labs - and replace it with bomb making labs and it's just like old times with organised crime."
Mr. Saker meanwhile has no doubts he did the right thing: "I was born and raised in Wheeling," he said. "How could I let anything happen here?"