(CBS) British police this week arrested three British Muslims in connection with the 2005 bombings on the London subway system in which 52 people were killed.

The world was shocked when the four suicide bombers blew themselves up that morning, especially when it turned out that they were British citizens. The four had been recruited to what is called the "Network," a web of radical Islamic organizations loosely affiliated to al Qaeda which has turned Britain into the western world’s richest breeding grounds for terrorists. How did this happen?

60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon met someone who knows. And for the first time he spoke about what it was like to be inside that network for ten years. His name is Hassan Butt. He’s only 26 years old, but some of the people he recruited were a lot younger than that.

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Hassan Butt admits he sent a 17-year-old boy from England to Pakistan to be involved in terrorist training.

Butt was only 16 when he was recruited by the network. Like thousands of other young British Muslims, he became exposed to some of the most radical Imams in Britain – Imams who supported attacks on westerners all over the world and believed that they had a tacit agreement with the British authorities.

They could preach hatred, they could recruit followers, they could raise funds, and they could even call for Jihad – Holy war – as long as they didn’t call for attacks on British soil. London became such a safe haven for Muslim militants that it came to be known as "Londonistan."

"Do you think this was an unspoken deal with the establishment? That, do whatever you want here as long as you don't blow us up?" Simon asks Butt.

"Absolutely. I believe that sincerely," Butt tells Simon. "That was an unspoken deal. And as a result of that, what tended to happen is the British government lost count of how many people were going abroad getting trained and coming back and going into operational mode as sleeper cells."

If there was such a deal, it was shattered in July 2005, when the four suicide bombers blew themselves up on the London subway; three of the terrorists were born in Britain of Pakistani parents.

"The four men who blew themselves up all came from good families, good homes, good educations. How do you explain what they did?" Simon asks.

"I mean, for me, they did it simply because they were convinced that they were doing something in the name of God, in the name of Islam. And they honestly believed they would obtain paradise from doing the activities that they carried out, the terrorist attacks that they carried out," Butt explains.

Ringleader Mohammad Siddique Kahn made a video of his last will. Hassan Butt had met him but insists they never discussed specific operations. Khan told him he first became attracted to radical Islam because the tradition he grew up with was forcing him into an arranged marriage. The radical Imams were offering him a way out.

"A lot of guys I know, actually, have become radicalized, or initially took the first steps towards learning more about Islam and their way of life as a result of them being tried to being forced to marry someone they don't want to marry," Butt tells Simon.

And Butt says the radical preachers are in favor of men marrying whomever they went, as long as their wives are practicing Muslims.

"So this is a very effective and an important proselytizing technique?" Simon asks.

"Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely," Butt says.

But that’s just the start of the recruiting process – it’s bringing them into the tent. Hassan Butt would follow up with young men in his gym in Manchester, England, and in neighborhood pool halls. He says he personally recruited between 50 and 75 people to receive training in Pakistan; thousands more were being recruited elsewhere in Britain.

"We’d talk about the suffering of the Muslims all over the world," Butt tells Simon. "We were very well-versed in the Koran, in the verses of the Koran, in the sayings of the Prophet and show that how it was permissible for people to go around killing innocent men, women and children."

"You would explain to them why it's permissible to kill innocent men, women and children?" Simon asks.

"Well, a better way to put it is, we would take away the innocence from the person so they were no longer innocent men, women and children," Butt explains.

"So, men, women and children would become non-innocents?" Simon asks.

"Become non-innocent and hence, combatants and allowed to be targeted," Butt says.

Produced By Michael Gavshon
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