A further five British jihadists on ‘kill list’
Defence Minister Fallon says Government ‘will not hesitate’ to wipe out threats to British citizens
The Isil executioner known as Jihadi John is one of a further five extremists in Syria on a “kill list” that has been signed off by David Cameron, The Daily
Telegraph understands. Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said Britain would not hesitate to carry out further drone strikes.
and JIHADI JOHN is at the head of a “kill list” of five Isil extremists signed off by David Cameron as legitimate targets for drone strikes in Syria, The Daily Tel
egraph understands. Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said yesterday that Britain would “not hesitate” to carry out strikes against jihadists plotting to carry out “armed attacks on our streets”.
He indicated that further air strikes could be carried out in Syria within weeks to prevent terrorist atrocities in the UK from “coming to fruition”.
The Prime Minister disclosed on Monday that two British jihadists were killed in Syria by UK forces while another was killed in a targeted US airstrike three days later.
A senior Whitehall security source told The Daily Telegraph that all three were linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant cell behind the shootings in Tunisia which killed 31 Britons.
Mr Fallon said: “There are other terrorists involved in other plots that may come to fruition over the next few weeks and months. We wouldn’t hesitate to do it again if we knew there was an armed attack planned and we knew who was behind it.
“There is a group of people who have lists of targets in our country, who are planning armed attacks on our streets, who are planning to disrupt major public events in this country. Our job to keep us safe, with the security agencies, is to find out who they are, to track them down and, if there is no other way of preventing these attacks, then yes we will authorise strikes like we did.”
Mr Fallon also attacked the “absurdity” of British armed forces being authorised to carry out missile strikes against Isil in Iraq but not in neighbouring Syria. He suggested that the Government was likely to return to Parliament for a vote on formally extending air strikes later this year.
The existence of a “kill list” was de- nied by Downing Street earlier in the week, but appeared to be confirmed by Mr Fallon yesterday morning.
He refused to say how many jihadists were being targeted, but sources told this newspaper there were five names.
Mr Cameron approved targets at a meeting of the National Security Council in May, shortly after the general election. The Attorney General was at the meeting and confirmed the legal basis for the action.
On August 21 one of the main targets, Reyaad Khan, 21, was killed in an air strike by an RAF drone. He was targeted after it emerged he was leading a plot to attack the VJ commemoration services in London last month, which were attended by the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister.
Ruhul Amin, another British jihadist described as an Isil “associate”, was killed in the same attack. Three days later Junaid Hussain, a British jihadist who was one of Isil’s most notorious recruiters and computer hackers, was killed in a separate US air strike.
Mohammed Emwazi, a 26-year-old from London, was unmasked as Jihadi John, Isil’s executioner-in-chief, in February. He is wanted for the murder of several British and American hostages, and is thought to be in hiding in Syria.
Omar Hussain, a former security guard at Morrisons, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, is thought to be on the list after becoming one of Isil’s most prominent recruiters. Raphael Hostey, from Manchester, who is believed to have persuaded dozens of Britons to join Isil, and Siddharta Dhar,
‘If there is no other way of preventing these attacks, then yes we will authorise strikes like we did’
a former aide to hate preacher Anjem Choudary, are also likely candidates.
The father of Nasser and Aseel Muthana, from Cardiff, both friends of Khan, who fled to Syria at the same time as him, said his sons may be next. He said: “I think they are on a hit list. They’re targeting everyone now. I ask the prime minister not to target them but if they have evidence I don’t mind, they deserve it... but I don’t think they are involved in attacks on the UK.”
The Government is likely to face significant scrutiny over whether the air strike in Syria was legal.
Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs select committee, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “We need to understand whether the self-defence case stands up in this.” He said he would support “a full reference to the Intelligence and Security Committee”.
Rights Watch, a human rights group, said it had started legal action against the Government to force it to reveal the legal advice used to justify the strike.
An enormous amount of meticulous planning and thought will have gone into the drone strikes that killed British jihadists who were involved in a plot to kill the Queen. Given the intense scrutiny the intelligence services and military find themselves under these days whenever they are involved in overseas operations, a very high threshold of evidence needs to be met before politicians will even consider authorising the use of lethal force.
Thus the operation that resulted in the deaths of Cardiff-born Reyaad Khan, 21, Ruhul Amin, 26, from Aberdeen, and 21-year-old Junaid Hussain from Birmingham will only have been approved after exhaustive checks were carried out to verify the initial intelligence assessment that they posed a clear and present danger to national security. Following routine checks by both MI5 and MI6, the GCHQ listening base at Cheltenham would then have been tasked with conducting round-the clock surveillance to find out the precise nature of the plots they were working on.
The fact that the trio were working in the same part of Isil’s Raqqa headquarters that helped to inspire June’s terrorist attacks in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, in which 30 British holidaymakers were killed, will certainly have helped to concentrate the minds of security officials in Whitehall. For not only did the Sousse attacks take the Government by surprise, they finally forced David Cameron and senior ministers like Chancellor George Osborne to accept they could no longer ignore the Islamist-inspired threat being directed towards our shores from failed states such as Syria and Libya.
It is within this context that Mr Cameron’s decision to authorise a dramatic escalation in Britain’s hitherto muted response to Isil and its associates needs to be seen. Until the Sousse atrocity, the Government appeared to be content with maintaining the status quo so far as the campaign against Isil was concerned, limiting Britain’s involvement to occasional bombing raids against Isil positions in Iraq, while steering well clear of Isil targets in Syria. Indeed, such was its disinclination to become involved in another messy overseas war that it was widely believed that Downing Street was even preparing to make further cuts to our otherwise depleted defence budget.
But when the history of Britain’s military involvement in the Syrian conflict eventually comes to be written, the Sousse attack will be seen as the key turning point when the Government realised it could no longer justify its policy towards Syria.
At the time of the Sousse attacks, senior ministers like Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, argued forcefully that if any evidence emerged that terrorists based at Isil’s Raqqa headquarters were responsible, then Britain had a moral obligation to act, even if it meant defying the will of Parliament that voted against British military involvement in Syria two years ago.
As yet there is no direct evidence linking the trio targeted by British and US drone strikes to the Sousse attacks. But there is plenty that shows the trio were directing followers in Britain to carry out terror attacks: this summer’s Victory in Japan Day commemorations, which were attended by the Queen, was mentioned as one possible target.
The challenge for the Government now is that, having found the cojones to take the fight to Isil militants based in Syria, it comes up with a plan every bit as meticulous and considered as the one put together for last month’s drone strikes.
The immediate challenge is to get enough votes to overturn the Commons ban against military intervention in Syria, which itself is no easy matter and is now unlikely to take place until after the party conferences, thereby allowing MPs a full and thorough discussion of the issues involved.
The greater task, though, will be to devise a viable plan for destroying Isil in Syria, as well as in Iraq. As recent events have shown, Isil is a well-organised and resourced organisation, and only a strategy that fully acknowledges the scale of the threat will have any chance of success.