TARGET BRITAIN!
Al Qaeda terrorists to swamp UK for Olympics
BRITAIN will become a magnet for dozens of terrorists during the Olympic Games, according to a respected think tank.
Terror nuts who have learned bomb-making skills using al Qaeda online publications will join Britishborn fanatics returning to the UK from war zones in the Middle East and Africa.
And the worsening economic climate may damage efforts to prevent radicalisation of young Muslims in the UK.
The result will be an unprecedented threat to Britain and the Games, according to the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
Amid fears of budget cuts to the intelligence services, the Rusi – which employs former spies as senior analysts and has close connections to the British Armed Forces – said in a study that Africa and the Yemen were also rapidly becoming major terrorist training areas.
Rusi’s latest terrorism analysis said: “The growing number of lone wolves who are radicalised and then indulge in some ‘terrorist tourism’ are not normally part of a well-organised pipeline of guerrilla fighters going to the jihad.
“More usually, they are personally connected to family or friends who have already gone to a conflict zone.
“Britons are thought to make up about 25% of the 200 or so foreign fighters that the al Shabaab group in Somalia currently fields, and who are engaging in a deepening war on neighbouring Kenya and its tourist trade.”
Nigeria is a newly identified potential breeding ground for radicalised Islamists with strong connections to immigrants in the UK following a year of violence in Nigeria blamed on extremist group Boko Haram.
“It would be surprising if both the tactics and the tensions underlying Boko Haram’s campaign do not spread some ripples among the Nigerian ethnic communities in the UK,” Rusi’s experts said.
Spending on the intelligence services – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – has shot up 250% over the 10 years since 9/11 to £3.5bn.
From 2010, they faced a cut of around 11.3% – which has largely been put off as a result of spending on security for the Games.