Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss

Submitted by AS (India), Nov 10, 2006 at 03:14

forget Iran. take care of Europe first. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=O5VOXHSC203I1QFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/11/10/nterror10a.xml

MI5 is fighting to contain a rapidly-growing terrorist threat, with at least 30 top-priority plots under investigation, the head of the security service said yesterday.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said Islamic militants linked to al-Qa'eda were recruiting teenagers to carry out suicide attacks and will use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons if they get the chance.

In a rare public speech, she gave a frank and sobering insight into the challenge facing the counter-terrorist agency, which has seen an 80 per cent rise in its casework since January.

Dame Eliza told an invited audience at Queen Mary College, London, that MI5 was monitoring some 200 groupings or networks comprising more than 1,600 individuals "who are actively engaged in plotting or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas".

The nature and gravity of the threat was deepening, fuelled by the rapid radicalisation of young British Muslims – some still at school, yet prepared to join the ranks of the suicide bombers. She said the country faced a sustained and growing threat that "would last a generation".

Although the MI5 chief normally prefers to stay in the background, Dame Eliza has followed the precedent set by her two predecessors in making the occasional public speech. This was her third since the July 7 bombings in London last year and, with the clearance of the Home Secretary, contained the starkest assessment yet of the dangers facing the country.

She said she was not seeking to be alarmist or deliberately stirring up fear to exaggerate her service's importance though, even with a thousand more officers than it had in 2001, MI5 could argue it remains understaffed because of the labour-intensive nature of its surveillance work. As a result, it was having to prioritise its inquiries on an almost daily basis.

Dame Eliza added: "Because of the sheer scale of what we face, the task is daunting. We shan't always make the right choices and we recognise that we shall have scarce sympathy if we are unable to prevent one of our targets committing an atrocity."

Although a parliamentary inquiry into the July 7 attacks exonerated MI5 of any intelligence failures, it later emerged that two of the bombers had been known to the service, though only indirectly. But Dame Eliza said hunting the terrorists was not as simple as it appeared on the BBC TV series Spooks where everything was "(a) knowable and (b) soluble by six people".

While MI5 was recruiting fast in an effort to infiltrate militant groups, this was proving ever more difficult because of the youth of some targets. "Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers," she said. "We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? 10? No, nearer 30 – that we know of."

Two of the July 7 bombers were known to MI5

She added: "These plots often have links back to al-Qa'eda in Pakistan and through those links al-Qa'eda gives guidance and training to its largely British footsoldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

Dame Eliza said surveys among Muslims suggested there could be as many as 100,000 people who considered that the July 7 atrocities were justified. But finding those who were prepared to cause us harm was difficult "given the scale and speed of radicalisation and the age of some being radicalised even while still at school".

She added: "We need to be alert to attempts to radicalise and indoctrinate our youth and to seek to counter it. Radicalising elements within communities are trying to exploit grievances for terrorist purposes; it is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalised and sent on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their

involvement in mass murder of their fellow UK citizens or their early death in a suicide attack or on a foreign battlefield.

"I do not speak in this way to alarm, nor as the cynics might claim, to enhance the reputation of my organisation but to give the most frank account I can of the al-Qa'eda threat to the UK.

"The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.

It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents. It aims to wear down our will to resist."

A similar message was being delivered on the other side of London yesterday by Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary.

In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, she called on mainstream Muslims to "stand up and be counted" in the struggle against terrorism.

"The Muslim communities in this country did not ask the terrorists to act in their name," she said.

"The vast majority are sickened by the slur on their great and noble faith. They make a huge and vital contribution to the life of this country.

"And they, the Muslim communities, have a special ability to make a difference in the struggle against extremism."

Mrs Beckett said it was "positively dangerous" to give a platform to fringe radicals as if they represented the Muslim community as a whole.

"When the next story about relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in this country hits the headlines, let's look for other voices

than those that represent a tiny minority viewpoint on one side or the other and offer the microphone to measured, mainstream voices who have the credibility and influence to tackle extremist distortions and offer a genuinely more balanced interpretation of events.

"We should let the extremists bark in the night while we, the vast moderate majority, find a common way to defeat them and the terrorism they espouse."

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