Further UK terrorist plots foiled
BRITAIN: Britain is dealing with an unprecedented terrorist threat which has seen MI5 and police disrupt five terror plots in the past two months alone, a senior Whitehall source has said.
The threat from jihadists intent on committing attacks in the United Kingdom is so high that the security services are currently running 500 active investigations looking at some 3000 potential suspects.
Counter-terrorism officials last night sought to disclose the scale of the threat as MI5 and police faced accusations they had missed chances to stop the Manchester suicide bomber when he was repeatedly flagged to authorities as a danger.
Family, friends and the local community are understood to have informed the authorities of the danger posed by Salman Abedi on at least five separate occasions before he blew himself up at a Manchester Arena pop concert, killing 22 people.
As the country remains on its highest terror alert for a decade, armed transport police have begun patrolling trains for the first time.
With the public urged to be vigilant, police were called to a string of false alarms. Bomb squad officers were yesterday called to a school in Manchester, while London’s Westminster Bridge and a shopping centre in Newport were closed because of suspicious cars, and Swansea magistrates’ court was evacuated over a suspect package.
The threat from battlehardened jihadists returning from Iraq and Syria and the peril of online radicalisation are contributing to the highest threat seen in decades. A total of 18 plots have been uncovered since 2013, including five in the two months since Khalid Masood killed four people during a car and knife rampage in Westminster.
The source said: ‘‘Abedi was one of a larger pool of former subjects of interest whose risk remained subject to review by MI5 and its partners.’’
The source said that where former subjects of interest seemed to show a risk of heading back into terrorism, ‘‘MI5 can consider reopening the investigation, but this process inevitably relies on difficult professional judgments based on partial information’’.
A terror attack in the UK is expected imminently after the national threat level was raised to critical in the wake of Tuesday’s attack in Manchester.
One former senior security figure said: ‘‘Knowing of someone’s radical sympathies and knowing they present a real and present danger are very different things.
‘‘So the essence of the security dilemma is triage, how to assess who and when to investigate very deeply, given the resources needed for 24/7 surveillance. For every suspect that appears to be high priority, another has to be pushed down the list.‘‘
Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at security think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said: ‘‘It’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to argue that these warnings were opportunities to stop the bomber. However, it’s also possible that these warnings were followed up, surveillance was conducted, and nothing was discovered. Authorities cannot keep monitoring a suspect indefinitely, given limited resources.
‘‘There may however be questions over his travel to Libya, Germany, and perhaps Syria, and his ease of return to the UK afterwards. It may point to weaknesses in the system of monitoring onward travel, especially as the number of UK nationals visiting Libya is likely to be fairly small.’’
Around 1000 troops remain on the streets after the Government invoked the Operation Temperer contingency plan, allowing police to call on military support.
Soldiers taking up guard duty at nuclear installations, highprofile sites and large public events are freeing up armed police to carry out counter-terrorism patrols.
Counter-terror police investigating the Manchester bombing arrested another man yesterday, bringing the total number of arrests to 10. Detectives were now questioning eight men following a series of raids across the country, Greater Manchester police said.
A relative of bomber Salman Abedi said he had felt increasing frustration at his treatment in the UK, which was heightened after a friend was fatally knifed in what he perceived to be a religious hate crime.
Libyan authorities, who are questioning Abedi’s parents and siblings, claimed he made a final phone call to his mother on the eve of the attack, in which he said: ‘‘Forgive me.’’
- Telegraph Group, Reuters