Al-Qaeda Primary Threat to U.K., MI5 Head Says

The United Kingdom’s domestic intelligence chief yesterday said that a “deliberate campaign” against the United Kingdom by al-Qaeda has become the “most immediate and acute peacetime threat” to the country in 100 years, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, July 9).

“Terrorist attacks we have seen against the U.K. are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups,” said MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans.  “The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because al-Qaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom.”

In a speech, Evans said that authorities were monitoring 2,000 residents suspected to be involved in terrorist activity, adding that intelligence officials believe “there are as many [potential terrorists] again that we don't yet know of.”

Evans’ predecessor Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned last year that British security officials were tracking 1,600 suspected terrorists operating within 200 cells throughout the country (see GSN, Nov. 10, 2006).

Evans said that stepped-up counterterrorism programs in the United Kingdom have boosted the number of terrorism suspects under surveillance.

The MI5 chief warned that “there remains a steady flow of new recruits to the extremist cause” and that the United Kingdom has added suspected recruits as young as 15 years old to its watch lists (Kevin Sullivan/Washington Post, Nov. 6).

“As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country,” the New York Times reported him saying.  “They are radicalizing, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism” (Sarah Lyall/New York Times, Nov. 6).

Meanwhile, recently appointed EU counterterrorism chief Gilles de Kerchove warned lawmakers yesterday that terrorists were likely to launch a new attack inside Europe and that al-Qaeda remains its greatest threat, Reuters reported.

“An attack perpetrated by local or international networks remains likely,” he said.

“Al-Qaeda … continues to be the most serious terrorism threat to Europe,” he said (Reuters/Yahoo!News, Nov. 5).

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