THE TERRORIST
More women pose a danger as fanatics brainwash them online
might agree that police should overtly deal with the threat.”
A P1(a) is the highest-ranking priority which means the spies believe an attack is being planned and they throw everything at it to stop it.
A P1(b) means a serious threat in which intrusive surveillance and telephone and email interception might be justified with a warrant from Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
A P2 is high or medium risk. A P2 (h) means travelling with the aim of waging jihad, fundraising for terror groups, or attending training camps. This might also justify a closer look at electronic communications.
A P2 (m) may include obtaining false travel documents or minor fundraising.
IMMINENT
P3 is used for uncorroborated intelligence.
It may require looking at groups to see if they do pose a threat.
And P4 is for people who may have been a danger, have served time and there is information they might return to their old ways. Then there is RCAP – the Risk of an imminent bombing, the Credibility of the tip-off, the Action that needs to be taken and the Proportionality of the action proposed.
In this instance there was information from another source the girl had plans to return to Syria to wed.
Putting it all together was enough to turn the lead into a full-blown P2 probe.
The girl’s phone records and emails were accessed under warrant.
Many of her contacts showed up in YOUNG women are now three times more likely to become Islamist terrorists than they were seven years ago.
Although numbers are still small they rose from four per cent of those convicted between 1998 and 2010 to 11 per cent from 2011-15.
A 1,000-page analysis of 269 terror offences by the extremism think tank the Henry Jackson Society shows half of offenders came from highly deprived areas where the Muslim population is most segregated.
In Birmingham, three-quarters of offenders came from just two areas, Hall Green and Hodge Hill.
While in London, most offenders commonly came from Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest. More than a third had been radicalised on the internet and one in 10 watched beheading videos.
Terrorists were also getting younger with an average age of 22, while 27 per cent lived at home with parents. The perils of being radicalised online were brought London trio off to join IS home by three London schoolgirls who fled the UK to join Islamic State in Syria in 2015.
Shamima Begum, 15, Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, went on to wed fanatics. Sultana was reportedy killed in an airstrike.
Report author Hannah Stuart said: “Family members are often the ones with prior concerns. They have a role in identifying offending behaviour.”
Security services have foiled 13 attacks in the past four years.
Britain’s counter-terror chief Mark Rowley said: “The spectrum involves one individual with a knife to groups of young men looking to get hold of firearms.”
He launched the ad campaign Action Counters Terrorism urging the public to be the eyes and ears of the security services.
Met Assistant Commissioner Rowley said there are 500 active investigations going on. He added: “We need the missing piece in the jigsaw in the investigations we are running that often the public have.”