British Domestic Terror Threat Grows, MI5 Chief Says

British authorities are investigating a growing range of individuals and groups that seek to sow terror with both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction, a top British official said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 6).

“Today my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totaling over 1,600 identified individuals — and there will be many more we don’t know — who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas,” said Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of the British MI5 domestic intelligence agency.

Her agency knows of more than 30 “plots to kill people and to damage our economy,” she added.  “What we see at the extreme end of the spectrum are resilient networks, some directed from al-Qaeda in Pakistan, some more loosely inspired by it, planning attacks including mass casualty suicide attacks in the U.K.”

The threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom was “sustained … not a series of isolated incidents,” Manningham-Buller said, adding that the “serious, growing threat” would last for a generation.

Of special concern, she said, is the increasing number of British citizens, particularly young people, who are suspected of backing terrorist activity.

“It is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalized and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow citizens or their early death in a suicide attack or on a foreign battlefield” (Phil Hazlewood, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 10).

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