When the bombers are refugees
The attack that immigration opponents have been predicting for years has finally happened, said Will Kirby in the Daily Express. Thirty people were injured last week when an improvised bucket bomb went off on a London subway train, shooting a fireball down the packed car. The device’s main explosive component didn’t ignite as intended—if it had, dozens of commuters would likely have been killed. Authorities suspect that the bomb was the work of two young refugees. An unnamed 18-year-old Iraqi, who came to the U.K. at 15, was arrested the day after the attack while trying to leave the country on a ferry. His suspected accomplice, 21-year-old Yahya Faroukh, a Syrian refugee and nightclub promoter, was arrested hours later. Police believe both men spent time in the care of Ronald and Penelope Jones, an elderly couple who have fostered more than 260 children over four decades and who were honored by the queen for their work. Recently, they began taking in refugees, and now their home has been “raided by armed police.” The couple are said to be “gutted.”
“Donald Trump was right!” said Martin Robinson in the Daily Mail. Hours after the bombing, President Trump tweeted that “sick and demented” terrorists had been “in the sights of Scotland Yard” but were allowed to roam free. U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd castigated the U.S. president for “unhelpful” speculation. But neighbors of the Joneses say the Iraqi youth was arrested two weeks ago “at the exact same station where the device exploded,” only to be released by police. And, they say, police were at the Joneses’ house multiple times before the bombing. “What if one of the children was under investigation?” asked neighbor Stephen Griffiths. “Why couldn’t something be done sooner to stop this happening?”
This attack is “a godsend to every single foreigner-hating Islamophobe,” said Sean O’Grady in Independent.co.uk. Now they can smugly say “I told you so” and insist we must turn away every Muslim refugee child for fear he is a terrorist in waiting. “If only terrorism was that simple to fight.” The truth is, tighter border and immigration controls can’t stop violent extremism. Terrorists can sneak in or pose as tourists, or they can be born and raised right here. “We will not stop terror in London by kicking blameless families of Syrians out of the country.”
Indeed, while ISIS claimed responsibility for this latest attack, it seems more likely that the bombers were self-radicalized, said Raffaello Pantucci in the London Evening Standard. This is the threat we now face: “disparate individuals launching attacks using rudimentary and homemade means.” Anyone can ram a car into a crowd, and it takes little more planning to dump some fertilizer into a bucket and ignite it. Londoners will have to return to the state of vigilance they inhabited during the era of IRA bombings. Look out for abandoned bags and swerving vehicles. “We all need to keep our eyes open.”