This story is from November 10, 2006

UK's 'serious' terror threat linked to Pak

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL / TNN / Nov 10, 2006, 20:34 IST

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Britain's lead security service is battling to contain a growing terrorist threat, represented by at least 30 serious plots.

UK's 'serious' terror threat linked to Pak

LONDON: Britain's lead security service is battling to contain a rapidly growing terrorist threat, represented by at least 30 serious plots that "often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan", MI5's chief has revealed in a rare public speech.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of Britain's counter-terrorist agency said that at least 30 mass casualty terrorist plots threatened the UK at present and her service was keeping at least 1,600 individuals, linked to 200 terror groups or networks under surveillance.
In the first clear public indication that Pakistan has firmly and damagingly been identified as the locus of international Islamist terrorism, the MI5 chief laid out the dangerous support provided to "largely British foot soldiers (of Al-Qaida) here" by Pakistan-based radical ideologues.
In a startlingly specific speech, she said, "We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of. These plots often have linked back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

Manningham-Buller's comments are being seen as more solid, sobering and serious than similar, less-specific warnings of multiple terrorist plots by British politicians.
In a chilling indication that the next phase of terrorist activity would involve so-called kitchen sink suicide bomb plots, the MI5 chief said currently-used homemade improvised devices would devastatingly give way to bacteriological and even nuclear devices.

She warned, "Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices, but I suggest tomorrow's threat will include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology."
Insisting she did not want to be alarmist or stir up fear, she said MI5's caseload of UK-based terror sympathisers - many of them British citizens - had increased by 80 per cent since January.
The MI5 chief's warning, which security experts, Muslim community leaders, politicians and pundits described as "sobering, unusually frank and deserving of serious attention", is thought to have been partly prompted by the tough sentence handed down just days ago to Dhiren Barot, the Indian-born Hindu convert who plotted mass murder in the UK with a 'dirty bomb' and gas canister-packed limos.
On Friday, a nervous Britain read the stark revelation by MI5 as a sign the security service wanted ordinary citizens to go on the alert because UK counter-terrorism operations were hampered by not having enough secret agents and spooks within the South Asian Muslim community.
Manningham-Buller's warning came just hours after British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett challenged Britain's South Asian Muslims to "stand up and be counted" in the fight against Islamist radicalism.
Warning that her 2,800-strong service was overstretched because of the labour-intensive nature of its surveillance work, Manningham-Buller said Britain was fighting a difficult war because its potential homegrown jihadis were often of school age.
In a significant appeal, she said Britain "needs to be alert to attempts to radicalize and indoctrinate our youth...it is youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalized and sent on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow UK citizens..."
She expressed alarm that many of tomorrow's British jihadis were often as young as 16 and she quoted statistics to show that the UK increasingly found a homegrown sympathy for terrorism.
In words that run counter to Tony Blair's government's refusal to accept that UK foreign policy was radicalizing Muslims, the MI5 chief said, "If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July bomb attacks in London were justified".
And she chillingly warned, "More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers."
In a gloomy prediction, the MI5 chief said Britain's "serious" and "growing"; Pakistan-linked homegrown terrorist threat would be "with us for a generation".
The MI5 chief's decision to speak out drew reflexive reaction from alarmed politicians with Patrick Mercer, security spokesman for the main opposition Conservative Party calling for more "spooks and secret agents" to tackle the problem.

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