‘Low-tech’ terror threat in spotlight as Daesh claims attack
Professor Lee Marsden, head of the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia, said there is a pattern of terror attacks launched with “whatever weapons are to hand.”
Marsden told Arab News: “It is the low- tech nature of this which is the concern — that there doesn’t need to be the level of sophistication that previous terror groups were able to employ.
“In one sense it’s less alarming because it was less sophisticated; on the other hand it does send out a message that individuals can inflict maximum damage with very limited resources.
“It’s the random nature of it which is an effective tool in terms of creating fear, and as a direct challenge to governments in the West about their ability to be able to protect their own citizens.”
Marsden said that Daesh’s claim that it was behind the London attack should be treated with caution.
“It’s really ( a question of) whether Islamic State is orchestrating this or whether it’s just inspiring the attack,” he said.
“Daesh are masters of publicity and very media-savvy. And it costs them very little to claim (such attacks). This gives them publici- ty, notoriety, particularly at a time when they’re clearly on the backfoot and losing significant amounts of territory in Iraq. This deflects from that; it sends out a message… that they’re still very much in business.”
It emerged on Thursday that a man had been arrested after a car was driven at speed into a pedestrianized street in Antwerp, Belgium, forcing people to jump out of its path.
The car sped away in the Belgian port leaving no one injured, but prosecutors said police later arrested a man suspected of being the driver, naming him as Mohammed R., a 39- year- old French national of North African origin.
Antwerp police found knives in the vehicle and a canister containing an unknown substance that bomb disposal officers were checking, Belgian federal prosecutors’ office said in a statement.
The Belgian federal prosecutors did not give details of any motive but said they had been called in “based on all these elements and the events in London yesterday.”
A French source later told Reuters that authorities there believed the suspect had not been trying to hit anyone, but was probably drunk and trying to escape a police check.