Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
LONE WOLF NOT MI5 ‘KNOWN WOLF’
TERROR killer Khalid Masood was not on MI5’s top-secret list of 3,000 jihadist suspects who experts believe actively wish to do us harm.
He had popped up on the radar but he was not seen as a “known wolf ”, meaning there was no intelligence to justify an investigation.
And although an intensive probe is now underway to piece together what prompted him to carry out his rampage, early indications are that he acted alone. This is backed up by reports that IS claimed responsibility for the attack before Masood had been identified – and even hailed as one of its “soldiers” a completely different man wrongly named in a TV report.
Security chiefs now fear it will be only the start of a whole spate of lone wolf outrages inspired remotely by distant IS commanders.
Ex-Labour Cabinet minister Liam Byrne said: “IS used to urge people to go to the Middle East to build its sick Utopia. Now it is inciting lone wolf attacks, specifying weapons and targets.”
Experts have warned MPs the list of those willing to mount such attacks will grow now that 70 al-Qaeda terrorists jailed in 2004-06 are due for release.
They could join around 400 battle-hardened Britons who have returned from fighting in Syria and Iraq to form an unholy alliance. Mr Byrne added: “Put all this together and it’s the perfect storm.”
Security analyst Otso Iho, of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, said: “Future attacks are most likely to take a simlar form, being conducted by lone actors with limited capability.
“There is less likelihood of complex and drawn-out attacks being conducted by
organised cells of multiple people.”