Mumbai attacks: Tracking British Islamists is an immense task for MI5

[Turborama]

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 28/11/2008
By Philip Johnston

If the involvement of British nationals in the atrocities in Bombay is confirmed, questions will inevitably be asked about the effectiveness of MI5 and MI6 in tracking home grown jihadis.


An Indian soldier runs for cover during the terror siege in Mumbai

It may sound perverse, but the intelligence and security services will hope that when they are identified, their names are known to the authorities. This might open them to charges of failing to keep tabs on suspected terrorists.

But the alternative is worse: that there were possibly half a dozen British men, almost certainly of Pakistani descent, active in Islamist circles of whom the secret services knew nothing.

MI5 has identified about 2,000 individuals who pose a direct threat to national security and public safety and believes the number of potential terrorists living in this country could run to 4,000.

The vast majority will have Pakistani links through their family background but will have been born and brought up in this country. They will have been radicalised often through contact with an extremist cleric at a mosque and as a result of internet contact with other jihadis.

Invariably, they will have been to Pakistan at some point where they will have come into contact with militants belonging to Al Qaeda or Kasmiri groups like Jaish-i-Mohammed.

However, even when someone is suspected of terrorist links, it can be difficult to keep them under surveillance once they leave Britain.

It is possible to stop an individual at the border if it is believed he intends to travel abroad to commit a terrorist act, or indeed to tip off Pakistani police that a potential terrorist is in their midst.

It is also unlawful to plot in this country to carry out a terrorist attack abroad, so a prosecution can be brought if there is sufficient evidence - which there often is not.

But if the suspicions are tenuous, it is difficult to prevent someone travelling to Pakistan ostensibly to visit their grandmother or uncle.

An estimated 400,000 trips a year are made by Britons of Pakistani origin to their ancestral homeland. Other than to ban such travel, there is no obvious way of preventing radicalised Islamists using this route into and out of the country.

The involvement of British Muslims in terrorist attacks abroad is not new, however. Some travelled to Bosnia to fight in the mid-1990s.
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[leveymg]

1. This is one of the biggest fears among US Counter-terrorism officials, as well.

Brits, like other Europeans, can travel to the US on visa waivers without any pre-flight background checks. That will change on January 12, 2009 when a new registration system, ESTA, comes into effect for visa waiver countries. Until then, keep your fingers crossed and hope the carriers are doing a good job of screening passengers as they board.

But, there is a deeper problem that all the technology in the world can't begin to address. That's hatred and the failures of the political leadership to address international and religious conflict in a constructive way. That we must demand, now, or else live in fear, and watch in dread as humanity bashes itself to pieces.