New scheme will put the focus on terror suspects
GREATER Manchester will pilot a new counter-terrorism scheme designed to stop the likes of Arena bomber Salman Abedi slipping through the cracks.
The government says it is determined to learn the lessons of last year’s terror attacks, including the suicide bombing which killed 22 people and injured hundreds more.
Abedi was known to MI5 but was not under active investigation at the time.
The Anderson report later revealed that there are around 20,000 Subjects of Interest (SOIs) that fall into the same category.
Now the Home Office is launching a strategy designed to focus on the ‘small number of specific individuals who are already known to police and security services, but who may not currently be the subject of an active investigation’.
The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) is being launched by the Home Office in three regions: London, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester.
The aim is for the security services and police to share relevant information with ‘partners who are best placed to safeguard and support the individual’.
The Home Office has not explicitly stated which ‘partners’ at the local level will be involved.
But in an interview with our sister paper the Mandchester Evening News last month, GMP Chief Constable Ian Hopkins suggested the scheme will involve immigration, customs, housing, local authority and education authorities, among others.
Mr Hopkins said the MAC pilot will operate ‘more in a way that we use currently with our Serious Organised Crime – bringing agencies together and flushing those snippets of information and bits of intelligence through the system seeing what everyone knows to see what we can do that will keep people actively safer’.
He added: “That’s how we have operated around organised crime here since 2012, and we have had fantastic results.
“It’s slightly more difficult in the counter-terrorism because some of the intelligence and information is secret and therefore you have to work at how you break that out.”
It is hoped that this information will help local authorities to intervene earlier and steer individuals away from terrorism.
However, if the individual is believed to pose a risk to themselves or others, police will lead a criminal investigation.
Referring to the Abedi case last month, Mr Hopkins said intelligence was ‘misinterpreted’ rather than missed entirely.
“He (Salman Abedi) was a student in this region, if you had known what they knew at the University for example, piece that together with some of the other information, other people may have made slightly different decisions,” Mr Hopkins said.
A Home Office spokeswoman could not give an estimate on how many individuals will be subject to the pilot scheme in Greater Manchester.
There are already a number of multi-agency programmes designed to combat terrorism including Channel, Prevent and Pursue.
The country’s national counter-terrorism strategy is known as CONTEST.
ACC Russ Jackson, counter-terrorism lead for GMP, said: “We welcome the MAC pilot to Manchester where we remain committed to keeping people safe.
“We will never forget the events of 2017 and we will continue to evolve and develop our methods of working to best protect people in Manchester.”
AC Neil Basu, national lead on counter-terrorism policing, added: “This pilot will help us explore how we can better assess any potential risk posed by individuals we may be concerned about.”