Strategic Comments – Volume 15, Issue 1 – February 2009
The evolving terrorist threat
UK trials reveal new types of networks
Recent terrorist trials in the United Kingdom have shed new light on the different types of terrorist threat faced by Western countries. The director general of Britain's MI5 security service, Jonathan Evans, claimed in January 2009 that a series of trials and arrests had had a 'chilling effect' on al-Qaeda's capability to attack the UK. However, the intention to mount such attacks remained, he said.
In most recent cases, suspects were 'home-grown', in that they were radicalised in Britain and involved in British-based plots. However, a distinction has emerged between groups formed through direct, real-life contacts and groups developed principally via the Internet.
The two categories present different challenges to the security services and the police. The first type, which sometimes have connections to radical preachers and whose members may travel to Pakistan for training, can be identifiable because of their links to other known groups and through common members and locations. However, it may be hard to determine when such groups are about to move from general support for al-Qaeda ideology to active terrorism. Training in terror camps has made them adept at evading surveillance.
The second category, developed largely through online contact, can in theory be tracked through a communication trail left on the Internet – although this can be disguised and concealed. The search for one online UK jihadist initially focused on the United States, as his communications were routed through an American university server. However, once a trail has been established, investigation becomes more straightforward and evidence of intent is easier to establish.
A third category could be the most worrying: groups that form autonomously, without external contacts, assistance or direction. These may be entirely outside the security services' field of vision.
aircraft. Eight suspects are due for retrial in April 2009. Whether or not they are convicted, the fugitive Rauf appeared to be linked into a labyrinthine network of other UK plotters.
Reports after his death suggested Rauf had been in contact with Muktar Said Ibrahim, the leader of the unsuccessful 21 July 2005 attacks on London's transport system, who is now in prison. All involved in the 21/7 attacks had attended training camps organised by radical preacher Mohammed Hamid, the self-styled 'Osama bin London' who was convicted in February 2008. Ibrahim and Mohammed Siddique Khan, leader of the group that killed 52 people in the 7 July 2005 attacks on London underground trains and a bus, were found to have travelled separately to Pakistan in late 2004. There they were trained to make bombs based on hydrogen peroxide.
Training in Pakistan has been an element of several UK plots. Court evidence showed that Mohammed Siddique Khan travelled to a Pakistani camp with Omar Khyam, the leader of a group arrested in 2004 and convicted in 2007 of plotting attacks with fertiliser bombs (an operation code-named Crevice by police). Travelling with Khan and Khyam, according to one witness, was Habib Ahmed, who at a trial in Manchester in December 2008 became one of the first people in Britain to be convicted of belonging to al-Qaeda. Ahmed's co-conspirator, Pakistani Briton Rangzieb Ahmed (no relation), had direct contacts with al-Qaeda's former number three Hamza Rabia, and other links.
The Manchester trial also highlighted another common factor, the now-banned organisation al-Muhajiroun (the emigrants). The 'Crevice' fertiliser plotters were members of al-Muhajiroun, formed by radical preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed. Asif Hanif, one of two Britons of Pakistani origin who carried out a suicide attack on a bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003, was a visitor to the group's London office and two of the 7/7 bombers are suspected of al-Muhajiroun links. Bakri Mohammed oversaw Habib Ahmed's wedding, and Habib was a known al-Muhajiroun activist.
The Finsbury Park mosque in London was another meeting ground. When radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri preached at the mosque from 1997 to 2002, visitors included Richard Reid, the 'shoe bomber' who tried to blow up an American Airlines aircraft in December 2001; Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged '20th hijacker' who was convicted in the United States in 2006 of conspiracy in connection with the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US; and three of the four 7/7 London bombers.
These men were thus part of an extensive network that existed before the 9/11 attacks on the US. Most of the radicalised men who travelled to Pakistan aspired to fight in Afghanistan after the toppling of the Taliban regime. However, once there, some were redirected by al-Qaeda's leadership to undertake terrorist operations in the UK.
Until the Manchester trial, the links between al-Qaeda's leadership and groups in the UK had appeared indirect. For example, press reports suggested that Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, a former al-Qaeda director for external operations now held at Guantanamo Bay, was behind the 2004 fertiliser plot and the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. Al-Iraqi's successor, Abu Obeida al-Masri, now reportedly dead, was believed to be behind the 2006 airliner plot. Bomb-maker Abu Khabab al-Masri, also reportedly killed, is thought to have provided explosives training.
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