Posted on 07/03/2006 8:09:19 PM PDT by blam
Terror plots accelerating, warns police chief
By John Steele
(Filed: 04/07/2006)
Anti-terrorist police are tackling an "accelerating" number of plots by violent Muslim Jihadi extremists, according to Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer.
Scotland Yard anti-terrorism branch is involved in an "unprecedented" 70 investigations, Peter Clarke the head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch and national co-ordinator for anti-terrorist investigations, warned yesterday. More than 60 people are facing trial on terrorist allegations. Two-thirds of those have been charged since last July.
In one of the most sombre and detailed statements yet on the threat to Britain from Islamic extremist terrorists, Mr Clarke, who is heading the inquiry into last year's July 7 bombings said the intelligence picture includes some "sinister" threats. "There are some 60 individuals awaiting trial in the UK for terrorist-related offences. This is unprecedented and the flow of new cases shows no sign of abating - if anything it is accelerating," he said.
"Some of the cases relate to individuals; some to networks. Even more alarming than the gravity of the allegations are two other factors: that the majority relate to the activities of British citizens against their fellow countrymen; and the extreme youth of some of those charged."
A 16-year-old is among those arrested and facing a charge of conspiracy to murder.
Mr Clarke did not address the recent anti-terrorist raid on a house in Forest Gate, east London, in which two brothers - one of whom was shot in the shoulder - were arrested and later released. Police found nothing incriminating in the house, raising questions about the nature of intelligence flowing into Scotland Yard and MI5 and how they dealt with it.
However, Mr Clarke said Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch now had "more active investigations than ever".
"Despite increases in resources we are running at near capacity. There is a lot of intelligence that requires investigation, some of it is very sinister. It is a very concerning intelligence picture - that is the simple and honest way of putting it."
Mr Clarke said that the picture of radicalisation of Muslim youths in the UK was "very diffuse and diverse".
He said there were features which led to a sense of grievance and alienation but the involvement of troops in Iraq did not appear to have a greater effect than others. Anti-terrorist officers have frequently noted that those under investigation had links to "Jihadi campaigns" in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Mr Clarke suggested that the public were "not well informed about the reality of the [terrorist] threat, or indeed the work that is being done on their behalf to try to keep them safe". In part, he said, this was inevitable when dealing with the "global terrorist threat and with secret sources of information".
"At the same time there are some things that we would like to be able to tell the public but we can't for very good legal reasons. With terrorist cases taking anything up to two years or longer to come to court it means that the public are unaware of many important things that have happened in this country. That is a pity and it means that we must guard against blame, recrimination, speculation or myths taking the place of solid public information," he said.
President Bush's fault.
The pain threshold isn't quite high enough....only when the body count rises will the public respond.
But we must never trace the phone numbers they are calling, listen in on their conversations, when they are plotting attacks, of track their financial transactions that fund their terror attacks.
And when we capture them, we mustn'tmake them uncomfortable in the least, even if it's a question of saving the world from a nuclear holocaust unleashed by them.
(/bitter sarcasm based on leaks and SCOTUS decisions)
Can you rewrite this sentence so it makes more sense.
As an English man who lives in Britain I have no idea what a Muslim outreach is, who is doing it, is it government or local government funded.?????????
The main aim is to try and create an environment where more moderate members of religion can try to get together to settle there religious and political differences.
In counter Insurgency operations you always need the carrot and stick approach, the stick against those who want to take up arms and the carrot to entice more of the moderates away from being outright terrorists or supporters.
What do you think we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan we are using the same methods, fighting the radicals working with the moderates.
So while you're focused on the 70 cases you do have, the 30 you missed are off your radar, and running loose. Terrorism is much better, pound for pound, than a legal system. A relatively small number of people can tie up a huge ammount of resources for quite a while.
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