Category Archives: National Security

Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security, Terrorism

UK intelligence has questions to answer over Manchester attack

TERRORISM

Following a terrorist attack, we can expect to learn more about the perpetrator in the hours and days ahead. Early detail doesn’t necessarily shed much light on how the attack was planned and executed, nor the exact motives as to why it was carried out. It can, too, take some time before we know the identity of the attacker.

However, the bomb detonated at Manchester Arena this week, by Salman Abedi, killing 22, has revealed a lot in a very short space of time. First, we found out that he was known to the authorities, and was a UK national of Libyan descent, the son of Libyan refugees who fled Gaddafi’s regime and were given safe sanctuary in the UK. Then, it quickly emerged that Abedi had recently arrived back in the UK from Libya, where his parents had returned to after the fall of Gaddafi. Reports have also emerged that Abedi displayed the black flag of Islamic State while living in Manchester, was known to have recited Arabic loudly in the street, and was reported to police by two people who knew him about his increasingly extremist views.

A picture is emerging of Abedi being a clear terrorist suspect before his appalling murderous act, and part of a network which may well have built and supplied him with a bomb. He is known to have travelled from London to Manchester in the hours before the attack.

The ability to immediately identify him has, of course, brought much of this information to light. But it is inevitable that questions are going to be asked about why Abedi was not under greater surveillance by the security services, given his background and his recent movements. It is a difficult enough process to prevent the terrorist who was not previously known to the police, but based on the information we have on Abedi, it is becoming clear that our current intelligence gathering has not detected warning signs which, put together, could have raised the alarm when Abedi returned from Libya just a few days before the attack.

Whilst dispiriting to admit, putting troops on the streets would not have deterred Abedi, given the way he carried it out. A military presence might put off an attacker with a knife or a firearm, but the suicide bomber will simply choose one of the countless other soft targets where no armed security force is present. Once the device is detonated, it is too late to respond.

Countering terrorism requires strong intelligence. What we have found this week is that our intelligence services require reinforcement, more of the invisible officers who are required to track those who intend to do us harm. Strong intelligence is an effective weapon against the threat of terrorism.

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Government, Islamic State, National Security

UK security services lack resources to monitor jihadists

BRITAIN

MORE than 3,000 jihadis are in the UK – stretching the country’s security services to breaking point.

Spies and counter-terror police are struggling to monitor a flood of suspects, mainly radicalised men and women in their early 20s.

About 850 Britons are thought to have gone abroad to fight with so-called Islamic State as they took control of large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

But with the terror group being pushed out, extremists with British passports are fleeing back to the UK where authorities fear they may unleash a new wave of attacks.

Although more than 100 have been killed, around half have returned home with battle experience and training in the use of explosives and firearms.

The security services have also foiled at least 13 planned attacks in the past four years. Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, Acting Deputy Met Commissioner Mark Rowley, has revealed.

The figures lay bare the scale of the terror threat facing the country from extremists.

The flood of new jihadists is stretching the UK’s security services to breaking point, with up to 30 officers required to provide 24-hour monitoring of just one suspect. Restricted resources mean MI5 can watch around 50 terror suspects around the clock.

As well as sophisticated plots to bomb transport hubs and shopping centres, jihadists are being groomed – often online – to carry out ‘lone wolf’ attacks using knives and vehicles.

A chilling report also revealed that the wives and children of Islamic State fighters in Syria could be brainwashed into carrying out attacks after returning to Britain. Europol, the EU’s police intelligence agency, said many posed a grave danger because they had been radicalised and desensitised to extreme violence.

In 2016-17, there were 380 terrorism-related arrests in the UK, compared to 307 in the previous 12 months – a rise of nearly 25 per cent. Anti-terror police stepped up arrests after Muslim convert Khalid Masood killed four pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in March before stabbing a police officer to death. Meanwhile, in the past three years there were 386 terror-related convictions, according to figures from Scotland Yard.

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Britain, Government, Islamic State, National Security, Society, Terrorism

Terrorist atrocity in the heart of London: a direct attack on democracy

TERRORISM

Police London

A security review is now underway following yesterday’s attacks within the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster. More armed police officers are to be deployed on the streets.

Terror came on London yesterday to the seat of government and Parliament for the first time since the IRA attacked Downing Street with mortar fire in 1991. Prior to that, in 1979 Airey Neave MP was murdered by a bomb planted in his vehicle which went off in the House of Commons car park. This time, people walking on Westminster Bridge were mown down by a car whose driver then proceeded to Parliament.

The assailant rushed the officers on the gate and was able to assault and kill a policeman before being shot dead. Praise must go to the officers who stopped him going any further and to the emergency services who were quickly on the scene to tend to the dead and injured.

All such attacks are appalling but especially so when the democratic process is the target and innocent people simply taking in the sights are the victims. Partly as a result of those earlier atrocities the security around the Palace of Westminster is nowadays extremely tight while allowing life to go on as normally as possible. But the days when it was permissible to move easily around government buildings – or even walk through Downing Street from Whitehall to St James’s Park unchallenged – have long gone.

The gates at the entrance to Downing Street began as removable barriers installed at the time of the IRA hunger strikes. Now they are a permanent fixture, along with all the other security paraphernalia required in these troubled times. The more recent threat posed by Islamist terrorism has seen the Westminster defences strengthened, with concrete bollards and barriers installed to stop lorries packed with explosives driving into the precincts patrolled by heavily armed police officers.

But what yesterday’s attack shows is how sophisticated weaponry is not necessary to make the sort of impact the terrorist seeks. From what we know, just a hired car and a knife was all it took. As with the lorry attacks in Berlin before Christmas in which 12 people died and in Nice last summer which killed 84, terrorists are increasingly using rudimentary and readily available methods of causing death and injury. This was seen here with the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013. The trained terrorist bomber despatched by his jihadist masters to cause carnage is being supplanted by the self-radicalised loner who is more difficult to trace.

One saving grace in this country is that our strict firearms laws make it hard for would-be terrorists to obtain the weaponry to carry out a Paris-style shooting and kill scores of people. There has not been a major attack in this country since the July 7 bombs on the London transport system in 2005 killed more than 50 people. But we cannot be complacent and, indeed, while the security agencies have thwarted many plots since then, it is not possible to stop them all. Inevitably, however, once the identity of the perpetrator is known there will be questions as to whether he was known to the authorities, which have been expecting an attack here for some time. Vigilance and good intelligence remain essential.

The Westminster incident came as new security restrictions were announced for taking laptops and tablets on certain airlines from specified airports and as foreign ministers from 68 coalition countries met in America to step up the international effort to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The campaign is about to reach a critical stage. The battle for Mosul, hard-fought for more than three months, is making slow but bloody progress, with Islamist fighters staging a counter-offensive and hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped.

This was the first meeting of the military coalition ranged against Isil since Donald Trump took over the White House in January. The US president has vowed to make the fight against Isil a policy priority and the Washington summit was convened by Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, to fill in the gaps and devise a plan.

But this will be easier said than done. It will require diplomatic compromises if Syria and Russia are to be part of the co-ordinated assault. Only troops on the ground will be able to dislodge Isil fighters: air attacks will not work on their own and always run the risk of killing civilians, as happened yesterday when a school harbouring local people was hit in Raqqa. The Islamists have no compunction about using human shields. The plan against Isil must also include what to do about Libya, which will become the next HQ for the fanatics after they are driven out of Syria and Iraq.

The so-called Islamic State is acting as an ideological driver for jihadist attacks in the West. They pose a real and present danger but they also want us to over-react and shut down normal life even more than it has been already. Even as we mourn those killed and wish the injured a speedy recovery we must also deny the attackers the disproportionate reaction they seek.

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