Indian-origin cop in the running to be named Scotland Yard anti-terror chief
LONDON: A senior Indian-origin police officer is in the running to take charge as Britain’s anti-terrorism chief when Scotland Yard’s national lead for counter terrorism resigns next month.
Neil Basu, currently Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner and senior national coordinator for UK counter terrorism policing, is tipped to take over one of the British policing’s toughest jobs from Mark Rowley, The Sunday Times reported.
Basu is a former Met Police commander overseeing organised crime and gangs. He has specialised in anti-terrorism policing for the past three years and is currently Rowley’s deputy.
He has been vocal about cracking down on British nationals who joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
In a recent interview with the Combating Terrorism Centre in New York, he said that exclusion powers would be applied to about 200 of the 300 fighters in the war zone as he revealed that about half of the 850 who travelled from Britain to join Islamic State had already returned and more than 100 were dead.
Of the remaining 300, twothirds would be blocked from the UK, he had said.
Other possible candidates for the post of Britain’s anti-terror chief include Helen Ball, a Met Police assistant commissioner, and Dave Thompson, the West Midlands chief constable, from whose area numerous terrorist plots have emerged in the UK.PTI