‘No evidence attack could have been predicted’
DARREN Osborne’s murderous attack on people near an Islamic Centre in the Finsbury Park area of London could not have been predicted, according to the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
A major report into terrorist attacks in the UK last year describes how Osborne, from Cardiff, used a vehicle in his June 27 attack which killed one person and left 10 others with serious injuries.
The 2017 attacks on Westminster, Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green resulted in 36 deaths – and the ISC concludes “potential opportunities” to prevent the Manchester bombing in which 22 died were missed.
But there is no suggestion the security services could have stopped Osborne’s attack on Finsbury Park.
The post-attack investigation indicated Osborne, who in February was sentenced to a minimum prison term of 43 years, acted alone.
Although he had an “extensive criminal history dating back to 1984, including 33 convictions for 102 offences”, he had not been “investigated by MI5 or [counter-terrorism police] prior to launching his attack and was not known to be a member of, or have links to, any extremist right-wing groups”.
The report claims he was “heavily influenced by the BBC drama-documentary Three Girls, which focused on the grooming and sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale by British-Pakistani Muslim men”.
It cites this as an example of how “material that is entirely lawful” can have “a radicalising effect on certain individuals”.
Dominic Grieve, the chairman of the committee, told us: “I don’t think there is anything to suggest that this could have been predicted in any way at all. The change that is now coming about is that this kind of extremism is now regarded as a national security issue rather than as criminality and is going to be treated as such, and to be focused on as such.
“I think that is the key and correct change that has come out of it because it must be taken seriously – a murderous, horrific act. But no... We saw nothing to suggest that anybody could have possibly predicted what he was going to do.”
The committee takes a much harder line when it comes to Salman Abedi, the terrorist behind the Manchester Arena attack. It found Abedi “visited an extremist contact in prison on more than one occasion, however no follow-up action was taken”. It argues extremist prisoners should not be able to maintain links with people “vulnerable to extremism”.
MI5 “decided not to place travel monitoring or travel restrictions” on Abedi; this “allowed him to return undetected to the UK in the days immediately before he carried out his attack”. The committee states that “MI5 have since admitted that given the information they had on Abedi, they should have done so”.
Abedi had been flagged for review but “MI5’s systems moved too slowly and the review had not happened prior to him launching his attack”.
They conclude: “What we can say is that there were a number of failures in the handling of Salman Abedi’s case and while it is impossible to say whether these would have prevented the devastating attack on May 22, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed.”
There is stinging criticism concerning the September 2017 attack in which a device partially exploded on London district line train after it arrived at Parsons Green. Twenty-three people suffered burns injuries and 28 were hurt in the crush as “crowds surged to exit the train”.
The reports details how the perpetrator, Ahmed Hassan, “had revealed in an asylum interview that he had been taken by Daesh and trained to kill, he had not been investigated by MI5 prior to launching his attack”.
The committee states that it has not been able to investigate this attack in depth because “despite multiple requests the Home Office failed to provide full evidence in sufficient time for it to be included in this inquiry”.
It states: “This is unacceptable: from what we have seen to date, there were fundamental failings in the handling of this case by the Home Office, the police and Surrey County Council. This litany of errors will require a separate comprehensive review, to which the Home Office must be directly answerable.”
The committee also found the “system for regulating and reporting purchases of the ingredients used to make explosives was hopelessly out of date in dealing with the threat posed”.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said the findings about the Manchester Arena attack raised “serious questions for the entire policing and security system, not simply MI5 alone”, arguing the UK Government had “undermined policing with cuts of 21,000 officers”.