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July 4, 2006

UK: 1,200 Islamist Terror Suspects Being Investigated By MI5

News from the Daily Mail, the BBC, the Independent and the Daily Star conjures up a disturbing picture of the potential threat which is happening in Britain, where Al Qaeda activists have been trying to infiltrate MI5.

MI5 is the intelligence bureau dedicated to monitoring potential security threats at home, while its counterpart MI6 deals with security threats from abroad. MI5 was founded in 1909, when it was called then the "Home Section" of the Secret Service Bureau. It gained its title "MI5" during World War One, in 1916, when it became "Military Intelligence, Section 5".

The story that MI5 has been subject to potential "spies" was first announced on 14 May, by Vincent Moss the Sunday Mirror, but that story is no longer in their archives. MI5 had tried to recruit more Muslims into its operations, hoping that they could be trusted to report on extreme Islamists. The recruitment drive involved contacting people in Britain's universities and colleges, where on-campus jihadism is still rife.

An unnamed minister said then: "The truth is that it has now been discovered that some of those people have strong links with al-Qaeda. There was always a risk that with such a speedy and widespread recruitment some would turn out to be bad eggs."

"But the recruitment has meant we are now in a much better position to stop al-Qaeda attacks than we have ever been before. Several planned attacks have already been stopped thanks to the high quality of our intelligence."

We reported last November of MI5's attempt to recruit new blood. The director general of MI5 is Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler. The April report from the Sunday Mirror states that she was also offering 27,000 pounds a year for "mobile surveillance officers", hired to follow potential security targets. The bureau was also seeking IT experts, technicians and language specialists to help monitor "traffic" via emails and phone calls between Islamist extremists.

We reported in April that MI5 had been trying to recruit 800 people for their "G-unit" the Islamic terrorism branch. At that time, MI5 had used additional funding to open offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow. There were plans to open offices in Wales and the southwest. Recent information suggests that four new centers in the south-west, Wales, the east and the south-east will be operational by year's end.

In our April report we noted that Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler had revealed that there were at least 400 al-Qaeda terror suspects in Britain, though if that figure were broadened to include those who had attended jihadist training camps in Pakistan, the true figure would be 600.

This figure was vastly larger than earlier figures, which had suggested that there were only 200 such suspects. MI5 revealed that of the 400 or 600 Islamist terror suspects, there was a "hard-core" of 40 to 60 extremists in Britain, who had the ability and the motivation to commit terrorist atrocities.

The news which is now being revealed about MI5's actions against terror are far more disturbing. The BBC and the Daily Mail report that MI5 now openly admits that Islamists tried to take advantage of the recruitment drive, and had attempted to infliltrate the organisation. These interlopers, MI5 claims, had been weeded out during the six to seven week vetting process.

The Daily Mail and the BBC state that the actual amount of suspected Islamists now being monitored in Britain is 1,200, from a larger pool of 400,000 extremist "sympathisers". The extra burden has caused the organisation to double its staff to 3,500.

Another disturbing fact emerged from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, Peter Clarke, (pictured right) who said that his police officers are currently engaged in the investigation of 70 terror plots in Britain and abroad. He claims that the majority of these investigations "relate to the activities of British citizens against their fellow countrymen".

Clarke said: "The level of counter terrorist investigations has intensified during the past 12 months. There has been an unrelenting demand for intelligence to be investigated and operations conducted to arrest suspects or disrupt terrorist activity when judged to be appropriate."

"That is the nature of what we face. The defence of the capital often starts many thousands of miles away. We have more active investigations than we have ever had before. Despite the increase in resources, we are running at or near capacity. There is a lot of intelligence to be investigated - some of it is very sinister. It is a very, very concerning intelligence picture."

Currently there are sixty people waiting to be tried on terrorism charges. Clarke said: "This is unprecedented and the flow of new cases shows no sign of abating - if anything it is accelerating."

But the real scale of danger may be far higher than the official figures which MI5 released on Sunday, of "1,200" potential terrorists under surveillance. According to Jason Bennetto in the Independent, there are an estimated 8,000 "Al Qaeda" (really Islamist) terror suspects who are currently under surveillance by the bureau.

According to Bennetto, these 8,000 individuals are being monitored in a covert operation, entitled project "Rich Picture". This project was set up after the attacks of 7 July last year. A security source is quoted as saying: "What we have been doing up to now is fire-fighting. There has been a huge volume of plots to investigate. Rather than just firefighting we are finding out the causes, why it's happening, why are people radicalised, and how they are radicalised, and then deal with some of these issues."

In 2001, about 250 "primary investigative targets" were known to MI5, and by July this year, these had risen to 800.

The aims of project Rich Picture are, according to a security source are preventative: "It is trying to drill down and identify those who may be coming into contact with radical sources. It is finding out these people at an early stage. You only have to look at the background of the 7 July London terrorists to see the speed to which radicalisation can take place."

Much of the investigation of the targets of project Rich Picture will be carried out using the skills and resources available at the government's communications headquarters in Cheltenham, GCHQ.

It appears that for members of Britain's establishment, the threat of a potential terror attack is very real. We reported on Sunday July 2 that the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee into the "War on Terror" have said the likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack upon Britain is likely.

Today in parliament, Tony Blair said of terrorists within the UK: "I believe at the moment we have a clear, active threat."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 4, 2006 8:48 PM

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