The Daily Telegraph

MI5 says it is running 500 inquiries after criticism over Abedi ‘failure’

Source says five plots stopped in past two months as 3,000 suspects investigat­ed

- By Ben Farmer DEFENCE CORRESPOND­ENT

BRITAIN is dealing with an unpreceden­ted terrorist threat in which MI5 and police have disrupted five terror plots in the past two months alone, a senior Whitehall source has said.

The threat from Islamist jihadists intent on committing attacks in the UK is so high that the security services are currently running 500 active investigat­ions looking at some 3,000 potential suspects.

Counter-terrorism officials last night sought to disclose the scale of the menace as MI5 and police faced accusation­s that they had missed chances to stop the Manchester 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 risk 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 remained on its highest terror alert for a decade, it was announced armed transport police would patrol 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 Westminste­r Bridge and a shopping centre in Newport were both closed because of suspicious cars and Swansea magistrate­s’ court was evacuated over a suspect package. The threat from battle-hardened 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 where former subjects of interest seemed to show a risk of heading back into terrorism “MI5 can consider re-opening the investigat­ion, but this process inevitably relies on difficult profession­al judgments based on partial informatio­n”.

A terror attack in the UK is now expected “imminently” after the threat level was raised to critical in the wake of Tuesday’s attack. The question of whether counter-terrorism forces have enough funding or resources for the fight against terrorism is now likely to become a General Election issue.

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.

“So who not to investigat­e urgently is as important a decision as who might be worth investigat­ing.”

Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a security think tank, 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.”

About 1,000 troops remained 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, high-profile sites and large public events are freeing up armed police to carry out counterter­rorism patrols.

However, David Blunkett, a former Home Secretary, said he had had reservatio­ns about authorisin­g their use in 2003 in response to concerns about alqaeda. He told the BBC: “You should use military personnel very sparingly indeed in a democracy.

“If there is an insurgency and therefore you know that people are at risk then of course you would use the military, but it is only in very rare circumstan­ce that you would even backfill.

“I have no problem with the military outside Buckingham Palace. I would have considerab­le problems if the military were used, for example, this weekend at Wembley.”

‘It’s triage ... For every suspect that appears to be high priority another has to be pushed down the list’

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 ??  ?? Mourners gathered in St Anne’s Square to pay their respects
Mourners gathered in St Anne’s Square to pay their respects

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