Intelligence

Al-Qaeda tells British cells to carry out wave of beheadings

David Leppard

ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week.

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.

The alleged attempt to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier or soldiers in Birmingham was just the first of a series of planned attacks, security sources say.

The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.

Muslim police officers serving in London may also be given extra protection. The Association of Muslim Police is in talks with the Met, which is expected to carry out a risk assessment of the dangers.

One well placed source said: “Cells in the UK have been alerted to carry out this type of attack as opposed to the more sophisticated type of bombing in which you place a large number of volunteers at risk. All you need for a beheading is a bit of courage and a sharp knife.”

The order to encourage “low-tech” assassinations is said to follow a review by senior Al-Qaeda planners after an alleged plot to smuggle bombs onto airlines was foiled by police last August.

The order encouraged followers to adopt the tactics used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, who was behind the abduction, torture and beheading of Ken Bigley, a British engineer, in Iraq in 2004.

Bigley, 62, was kidnapped and filmed on video begging for Tony Blair to end the war before being beheaded. Footage of his “execution” was later posted on the internet.

After learning of the alleged Birmingham plot to behead a British Muslim soldier returning from Iraq or Afghanistan last autumn, the Ministry of Defence spent several months trying to establish how many soldiers fitted into this category.

After focusing on soldiers in the regular army, the Royal Marines and the Territorial Army, officials whittled the list of potential targets down to fewer than 10.

These soldiers were warned about the potential threat and advised on protection measures, or given the means to protect themselves. Sources said several of the suspects were personally acquainted with the Muslim soldier who was said to have been lined up as their first victim. The soldier, a corporal in military intelligence, is said to be under close protection.

The surveillance operation in Birmingham was stepped up at the beginning of last month when scores of detectives were seconded from the Greater Manchester police to join their colleagues in the West Midlands anti-terrorism unit.

The decision to arrest the nine suspects is said to have been made after one of them was seen buying a video camera in an electronics shop last weekend.

According to another source close to the investigation, those involved in the plot were supplying equipment and computer hardware to Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. One of the suspects had recently returned from a trip to Pakistan.

There were also claims this weekend that several of the arrested men attended the Hamza mosque in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham.

An official at the mosque, who refused to be named, said it was a centre for a group called Tablighi Jamaat, described by western security services as a “conveyor belt to Al-Qaeda”. The group’s British headquarters is in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where two of the London bombers regularly attended. In a statement, mosque officials said they could not confirm the claims.

Despite intelligence about the new UK strategy security sources say that Al-Qaeda has not entirely dropped more traditional terrorism tactics.

At least two cells are believed to be preparing attacks using cars packed with fertiliser explosives to cause mass casualties.

Armed guards were last month deployed outside the Bacton gas terminal in Norfolk following intelligence that it had been “scouted” by known terrorist suspects. Intelligence suggested the suspects were discussing how to carry out a car bomb attack.

A Whitehall official said MI5 was now monitoring about 280 terror suspects.

Each was suspected of serious intent to carry out an attack. Cells are being closely observed in at least four British towns and cities.

February 4, 2007 at 12:14 PM in Current Terrorism, MI5, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

New MI5 boss is top expert on Al-Qaeda

New MI5 boss is top expert on Al-Qaeda - Sunday Times - Times Online

David Leppard
A SPYMASTER who has tracked Al-Qaeda’s activities in Britain since the organisation first emerged as a threat to this country is frontrunner to be the next head of MI5.

Sources said Jonathan Evans, senior deputy director-general of the security service, was a “racing certainty” to take over from Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who surprised Whitehall last week by announcing that she would be stepping down early from the top job.

Sources said she had decided to quit in anticipation that she might be asked to resign over blunders concerning last year’s July 7 bombings.

Evans is a career spy with a background in fighting terror. He served as head of G branch, MI5’s international terrorism section, making him the agency’s then supremo in dealing with the emerging Al-Qaeda threat. Before that he served as a senior officer in Northern Ireland, helping to spearhead the fight against the IRA.

The Home Office maintained last week that there was nothing unusual about Manningham-Buller’s decision to leave after only four years in the job.

In her leaving statement she insisted that she had decided in “early 2005” that it would be time to stand down by April 2007. But Whitehall officials said that the announcement had come as a “surprise”.

Insiders and security experts see it as a “pre-emptive strike” linked to forthcoming revelations concerning how much her agency knew about the intentions of the July 7 suicide bombers in the 18 months before the attacks.

The sources said that the agency was bracing itself for detailed disclosures about its intelligence on Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer, the two leading bombers who killed 52 people. The Sunday Times and other media are prevented by court orders from making this evidence public.

The sources said that Manningham-Buller’s decision to step down was unlikely to head off widespread public criticism of the spy agency: “She knows she will be asked to resign over this. She was protected by Charles Clarke (the former home secretary) but some people believe that if things go badly wrong John Reid (his successor) will be happy to slit her throat.”

In his statement on her departure, Reid was fulsome in his praise. “Her contribution to the security of our nation has been invaluable and I pay tribute to her unstinting efforts,” he said.

The Home Office will this week begin circulating advertisements for her replacement. Reid will make the final choice, expected to be announced by the end of next month. However, security sources are already tipping Evans to take over in April. As deputy, he has had daily responsibility for oversight of the service’s operational work.

Evans is highly respected as a spymaster. A source said: “He is very switched on. He’s dynamic, confident, a natural leader. He’s a gifted communicator. He’s very comfortable with himself and is good with ministers and mixing at the top table. But he is also very personable. He’s good at dealing with staff in a hail-fellow-well-met sort of way.”

Evans is also said to have a formidable intellect: “He grasps the material and can make a quick decision. He has gravitas but he’s also got a very relaxed style.”

Former MI5 bosses including Dame Stella Rimington and Sir Stephen Lander have taken on part-time business directorships or public appointments, but Manningham-Buller is understood to want to spend more time on her 70-acre farm with her husband, a university academic.

They keep chickens and alpaca, the llama-like South American animal reared in Britain mainly for its wool. “She’s keen on hens and organic eggs,” said a colleague. “But she’s also very much in love with her husband. They are looking forward to spending more time together.”

December 25, 2006 at 10:25 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US 'issued alert' on 7/7 bomber in 2003

US 'issued alert' on 7/7 bomber in 2003 - Britain - Times Online

By Daniel McGrory
Fresh calls for public inquiry into London bombings after publication of American book claiming terrorist was known

THE leader of the July 7 suicide bombers was considered such a dangerous threat that he was banned from flying to America two years before the attack in London, according to a book written by a US intelligence specialist.

Although MI5 has always denied knowing that Mohammad Sidique Khan was a potential danger, the CIA is alleged to have discovered in 2003 that he was planning attacks on American cities.

The disclosures are made in a book by the award-winning author Ron Suskind that is serialised today in The Times.

The claims contradict evidence from Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director-General of MI5, to the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee that Khan had never been listed as a terror threat before the attack that killed 52 innocent people.

A senior British security source has told The Times that they were aware of the allegations but said that they were “untrue and one of the many myths that have grown up around Khan”.

However, the disclosures will add to demands for Tony Blair to agree to a full public inquiry into intelligence lapses before the attack on July 7. Families of the victims, preparing to mark the first anniversary, are among those calling for an independent investigation to uncover all that British Intelligence was told about the suicide bombers by international security agencies.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This new information shows that there is an unarguable case for an independent inquiry that will enable us to ensure any weakness in our security and intelligence system are put right before we face any further terrorist threat.”

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the arguments for a public inquiry were now overwhelming.

“In light of this latest claim the case for a public inquiry becomes even more clear. There are things we are not being told about what our intelligence services knew, and if the US intelligence services knew something they should bear some of the responsibility for the attacks,” he said.

The parliamentary inquiry into 7/7 found that Khan and two of the other suicide bombers were known in some form to MI5. It said that Khan was regarded as a peripheral figure.

However, Suskind, in his book The One Percent Doctrine, says that CIA agents found evidence that Khan was in contact with Islamic extremists in the US about a plot to blow up a number of synagogues on the US East Coast. He alleges that Khan made at least two trips to America to finalise attack plans and that US security officials insisted the CIA’s Counter-Terrorist Centre shared its information with a British intelligence official in London.

The book claims that Dan Coleman, who led the FBI’s investigation into al-Qaeda, had read detailed files of Khan’s many telephone calls and e-mails, beginning in 2002, to a number of US based al-Qaeda-trained militants living in New York and Virginia.

Khan, a primary school teaching mentor from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, is alleged to have been in contact with a student from Falls Church in Virginia, who in March was sentenced to 30 years for a plot to assassinate George Bush.

E-mail transcripts monitored by the National Security Agency (NSA) show, says Suskind, that Khan, 30, was in direct contact with Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24. NSA intercepts also allegedly show that Khan was in touch with the US-based extremists he later met in Pakistan.

Investigations have shown that on his arrival in the US, Khan gave a false address to immigration officials about where he was staying during his visits.

Mr Coleman, known to colleagues as The Professor because of his knowledge of US al-Qaeda sympathisers, said that Khan was “a very dangerous character” who should be closely watched. He says that he does not know if Britain acted on this warning.

The CIA claims that it had only 36 hours’ warning in March 2003 that Khan had booked a flight to New York. The FBI said that it did not have the manpower to follow Khan in the US so it placed his name on a “no-fly list” to stop him from leaving Britain, according to the book.

This year, a leading US Senator, Charles E. Schumer, commenting on newspaper reports in New York that US authorities had tipped off British Intelligence, said: “This is the British version of pre-9/11, where a country receives a generalised warning and ignores it with terrible consequences.”

Suskind told The Times: “British intelligence was certainly told about Khan in March and April 2003.

“This was a significant set of contacts that Khan had, and ones of much less importance were exchanged on a daily basis between the CIA and MI5. British authorities were sent a very detailed file.

“This demonstrates a catastrophic breakdown in communication across the Atlantic.”

The alert on Khan coincided with an order for New York police to be on the lookout for improvised chemical devices on the Subway. Khan was not linked to this alleged plot.

June 19, 2006 at 12:56 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Shake-up follows London terror reports

ePolitix.com - Shake-up follows London terror reports

Reviews of the events surrounding the July 7 bombings have prompted a series of changes to Britain's intelligence mechanisms.

A report from the intelligence and security committee, drawn up from MPs and peers, suggested there had been misjudgements over the threat posed by 'home-grown' terrorists.

And the government's official analysis concluded that the four suicide bombers - Mohammad Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay - carried out their attacks on a budget of less than £8,000.

Home secretary John Reid said that there needed to be an "effective and adequately resourced law enforcement and intelligence effort" to deal with the problem.

Meanwhile, MI5 director general Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller announced that her organisation is halting work on serious crime issues to focus on the terrorist threat.

She said "we are now faced by an unprecedented level of priority casework on international terrorism and I have decided, with the home secretary's agreement, that we need to withdraw from serious crime casework".

"The resources freed up will help to reinforce our work on international terrorism," Dame Eliza added.

According to data on the MI5 website, serious crime accounted for 2.5 per cent of the organisation's resources in December 2005.

Reid has also accepted the need to shake-up the warning system for assessing the terrorist threat.

The home secretary said the government would introduce a "simpler, more flexible and proportionate system" for assessing and categorising threat levels.

The intelligence and security committee report called for reforms, and former home secretary David Blunkett has also expressed his doubts over the way it functions.

The alert was dropped a level just a month before the July attacks, a move Blunkett said he would have objected to.

"When I was home secretary, with the information and advice I was given, I would not have countenanced, I would have said to MI5 'I don't believe this is the correct thing to do'," he told the BBC.

"With the hindsight I have now, I wouldn't do it, but with the advice and information that might may have been available to MI5 and Special Branch at the time, they may have taken an entirely different view.

"The problem we have is that the home secretary isn't in charge of operational matters and you have to be very certain of your facts and very secure and confident in your belief to actually say to them 'I'm terribly sorry but I'm challenging you not to do this'."

May 11, 2006 at 12:00 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 and MI6 discover new market for spies like us

MI5 and MI6 discover new market for spies like us - Business - Times Online

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
HOW vulnerable are Britain’s secret intelligence agencies to the lucrative alternative job offers now being made by private security companies? Spies with foreign travel experience and analysis skills are in big demand in the private sector — and the salaries on offer can be tempting for Crown servants earning relatively low pay.

There is no evidence of a serious exodus of intelligence officers from MI6 and MI5, but in recent years the private security company business has proliferated to such an extent that the secret agencies have lost some of their key staff.

One intelligence official said: “There’s no question that these companies are now providing an attractive alternative for perhaps the more adventurous and entrepreneurial members of the agencies, and they can get double the salary.”

In the same way that the SAS regiment has been looked on as a potential rich source for security company headhunters, MI6 and MI5 have been viewed in the same light. However, to judge by the increasingly successful recruiting campaigns by the two agencies, there are still enough men and women who prefer to serve their country at a lower salary — and a guaranteed pension.

Nevertheless, there is a market for ex-spies. Although television programmes tend to spice up the lives of the average MI6 or MI5 officer, giving the impression of a secret world unaccountable either to the law or to Parliament, the reality is far more mundane, and more bureaucratic. Both these agencies have to account for everything that they do, and that means form-filling. MI6 also works according to requirement guidelines set by Cabinet Office gurus, and any planned operation that might in any way cause political problems for the Government has to be approved by the Foreign Secretary.

So, for the more maverick- inclined spy, the controls and bureaucracy of the agencies might seem unappealing after a period in either Thames House (MI5) or Vauxhall Cross (MI6); and this is where the private security companies can benefit.

Less bureaucracy and more money are potentially attractive options for someone who enjoys the secret world but hankers after a more free- spirited environment.

A number of private security companies now have former MI5 and MI6 officers on their staff. Indeed, some companies have been set up by ex-spies and have retained links to their former government employers.

March 12, 2006 at 11:17 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Secret files reveal WW2 problem of Nazi nobles

Scotsman.com News - Secret files reveal WW2 problem of Nazi nobles

NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN

NEWLY-RELEASED papers show the scale of suspicion and fear around the British High Command during the Second World War.

It has emerged that intelligence chiefs faced a dilemma over how many aristocrats with Nazi sympathies they should arrest, amid fears that interning too many would inflate their importance.

Documents released today at the National Archives in Kew show MI5 spied on a god-daughter of the late King George V, Dowager Viscountess Dorothy Downe, noting her as a "most fanatical admirer of Hitler" and intercepting her mail.

She was a high-profile British Union of Fascists official, but was not arrested despite concocting a plot to get herself detained which included having a letter written to The Times in 1940 demanding her arrest. However, the security service said there were "indications" she was anxious to become a martyr.

In addition, the intelligence services kept the folk singer Ewan MacColl - father of pop star Kirsty MacColl - under surveillance for years because of his communist sympathies. As a result, MI5 tried to get the BBC to stop using him on their programmes.

Documents also reveal how the sighting of a top German agent led to fears that Britain's "double-cross" strategy to intercept German agents might be compromised.

The sighting prompted a trawl of nightclubs, hotels and bars in a desperate attempt to locate Wilhelm Morz, "one of the cleverest secret agents the Gestapo has". The double-cross system meant MI5 was in a position to monitor and pick up German agents who were then "turned" and began working for Britain. The authorities feared Morz would figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately for MI5, the trail went cold.

March 5, 2006 at 04:40 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up

MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up - Sunday Times - Times Online

David Leppard
MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of resources to fight Islamic terrorism.

To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the “missed intelligence” leading up to the July attacks in London.

They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21.

The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings.

Until now it was not known that any of the July 21 suspects, who are awaiting trial, were familiar to the intelligence services. It has been disclosed that MI5 had placed two of the July 7 bombers under surveillance before their attack, but judged them not to be a threat.

The new documents show that MI5, which is responsible for national security, allowed the July 21 suspect to travel to Pakistan after he was detained and interviewed at a British airport. Once in Pakistan he was monitored by SIS, which gathers intelligence overseas.

MI5 then conducted what the leaked memo says was “a low-level short-term investigation” into the suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

It stopped monitoring him because it said “the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance”.

Scarlett revealed details of the operation to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) last November. The committee, comprising MPs and peers picked by Tony Blair, is conducting a secret inquiry into the “lessons learnt” from the July attacks. It is due to be completed in April.

The Scarlett memo — marked top secret — was leaked by the dissident officers who want a public inquiry similar to that undertaken in America after the 9/11 attacks.

They believe it would highlight the need for MI5 and SIS to be given more resources to deal with Al-Qaeda. They are critical of Blair, who has ruled out an inquiry saying it would distract the security services from fighting terrorism.

The leaked memo refers to Scarlett as C — the traditional codename for the head of SIS. It states: “On the events of July itself, and the question of whether intelligence was missed, C noted that SIS had previously been involved in an earlier investigation of one of the July 21 (suspects) in Pakistan.

“This had been at the Security Service (MI5)’s behest and should be discussed with MI5.”

Another document, MI5’s November 2005 memo The July Bombings and the Agencies’ Response, has also been shown to The Sunday Times.

It names the suspect who was the subject of the 2004 investigation and shifts responsibility for the decision to stop monitoring him to the Pakistani intelligence authorities.

“(The suspect) had been the subject of a low-level short-term investigation concerning a visit he made to Pakistan after he was interviewed on departure from the UK,” it states.

“However, the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance in a terrorist context.”

The assessment echoes a decision by MI5 to halt surveillance on two of the July 7 bombers 16 months before the attacks. Both were filmed and taped by MI5 agents as they met two men allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in England.

After making what an official called “a quick assessment”, MI5 concluded Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were not immediate threats. As the MI5 memo puts it: “Intelligence at the time suggested Khan’s purpose was financial crime rather than terrorist activity.”

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “These leaks show that the need for an independent inquiry is incontrovertible.”

There is a growing consensus in Whitehall that the intelligence services will be seen to have made critical errors in failing to assess adequately the threat from at least three of the July suspects.

Scarlett conceded to the ISC that his agency had reacted too slowly. “Summing up the position before July 2005, C noted SIS were conscious of the size of the target, but equally conscious of what we did not know; we were thinly spread in North and East Africa; we were looking at new ways of increasing our reach; and we had sought funding to grow as fast as we thought feasible.

“Turning to the lessons learnt, C noted that SIS had understood the nature of the threat and that there was a great deal that we did not know. SIS had developed strategies to meet this threat.

“The attacks had shown that our strategies were correct, but needed to be implemented more extensively and more quickly,” the memo noted.

Scarlett said that even before the attacks, SIS had planned to expand overseas. “C concluded by explaining how post-July SIS were speeding up implementation of the pre-July strategy.” He said the agency did not want more money for staff.

The dissident officers believe the buck-passing revealed in the memos demonstrates that there should be closer co-operation between the agencies.

They support calls for a unified department of homeland security, along the lines suggested by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, this month.

February 26, 2006 at 03:58 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 fails to throw light on bombers after six months of investigations

News - Yorkshire Post Today: News, Sport, Jobs, Property, Cars, Entertainments & More

Maggie Stratton
BRITAIN'S intelligence services know alarmingly little about the worst terrorist attack on Britain despite more than six months of investigations, it emerged yesterday.
A leaked secret report for Tony Blair and senior Ministers into the July 7 London bombings states: "We know little about what three of the bombers did in Pakistan, when attack planning began, how and when the attackers were recruited, the extent of any external direction or assistance and the extent and role of any wider network."
The eight-page report by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a Sunday newspaper reported, admits MI5 still does not know whether the attacks of July 7 and July 21 were linked and whether al-Qaida was behind them.

It has already been reported that spies knew the suspected leader of the July 7 bombings Mohammed Sidique Khan, from Dewsbury, was planning to fight for al-Qaida more than a year before the attacks.
MI5 had originally believed Khan and the three other July 7 suicide bombers – Shehzad Tanweer, from Beeston, Leeds, Hasib Hussain, 18, from Beeston and Jermaine Lindsay, who grew up in Huddersfield – acted alone, but they now think a wider network may have been involved.
And, the report leaked to The Sunday Times reveals, the intelligence services have found "growing evidence of a wider extremist network in West Yorkshire associated with the 7/7 bombers."
It adds: "We still do not know whether we are dealing with an orchestrated campaign or coincidental/ copycat attacks.
"We do not know how, when and with whom the attack planning originated. And we still do not know what degree of external assistance either group had.
"Whilst investigations are progressing, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge."
The report speaks of no insight into the degree of input from al-Qaida, how long the July 7 attacks had been planned, or how the suspects operated.
Tories are calling for an independent inquiry into what the intelligence services knew before the attacks.
And Shadow Homeland Affairs Minister Patrick Mercer said yesterday he was "extremely concerned" about "complacency within the Government" over the terrorist threat to Britain.
He added: "At the moment people think 'We have had our attack and we have got away with it. Fifty-two killed is too many, but it isn't the two or three thousand lost in New York or the 200 in Madrid'. And therefore the tendency for all of these (security) policies to be put on the backburner."
Among the findings presented in the report are that a network of "Iraqi jihadis" is attempting to bring a terrorist campaign to Britain and a group of al-Qaida facilitators in the West Midlands are being investigated.
MI5 believes the main West Midlands suspect directed a second man, an Iraqi, who arranged a trip to a Pakistan training camp for the leader of a separate British terrorist cell.
The camp, which the cell leader visited over three months in early 2005, may have been the same one where former teaching assistant Mohammad Sidique Khan was trained. The report "speculates" both men may have been trained by al-Qaida at the same time.

January 30, 2006 at 10:10 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Intelligence chiefs resisted backing anti-terrorism Bill

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Philip Webster, Political Editor
INTELLIGENCE chiefs resisted government pressure to back controversial aspects of the anti-terror Bill, it was revealed last night.

Ministers wanted to use secret intelligence to impose a ban on a number of radical Islamic groups after the London July 7 bombings, which killed 52 people. Private e-mails from the heads of MI5 and MI6 reveal that they were reluctant to allow a repeat of the run-up to the Iraq conflict, when their assessments were used to justify the case for going to war.

Leaks of official e-mails disclosed by the New Statesman also suggest that Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, were at odds, with Mr Clarke voicing doubts over the banning of some groups and suggesting that Mr Straw was “isolated” on the issue.

Inquiries by The Times have also revealed severe doubts at the top of the intelligence and security services about allowing their intelligence to be used to justify political decisions.

Senior figures have said that the wounds of the Iraq war run deep and that they should never again be used publicly to vindicate military decisions.

The e-mails suggest that John Scarlett, the head of MI6, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, his opposite number at MI5, declined to throw the weight of their organisations behind a change of policy on Islamist groups, despite pressure.

Tony Blair made the possible banning of groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun part of a 12-point plan of terror measures in a press conference after the July 7 attacks and the foiled attacks of July 21.

Plans to widen the powers to ban such groups were passed in the Lords last night, although they did not specify the groups. Mr Clarke has told Parliament in a written statement that he intends to do that later.

Mr Scarlett, who was at the centre of claims that the Government “sexed up” the Iraq war intelligence and was called before the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the weapons expert, was reported in the e-mails as saying that he “sees this as a political issue and a matter for the Foreign Secretary”.

A separate e-mail summarised the position of the agencies as being: “They do not oppose proscription but oppose reliance on their assessment to justify what they see as a change of policy, not fact.”

The e-mails apparently describe a conversation between Mr Clarke and Mr Straw on August 28. A private secretary in Mr Straw’s office quotes Mr Clarke as describing Mr Straw as isolated in his view that the political wings of the Palestinian group Hamas and Hezbollah should be banned.

The Home Secretary said that he would be “happy in principle” to include them in the overall ban but “only if the Foreign Secretary could square the agencies”. In another e-mail Mr Clarke is reported as suggesting that the Government “would lose the case for proscription”.

Mr Clarke’s apparent doubts about banning Hizb ut-Tahrir were detailed in another e-mail. But the passage that will embarrass the Government says: “There is no apparent case to proscribe HuT because its activities abroad include involvement in terrorism. Indeed, it is not entirely clear whether they would be caught under a future criterion of ‘justifying or condoning violence’.”

January 25, 2006 at 09:41 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Police 'betrayed' over cash to fight terrorism

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Daniel McGrory, Alice Miles and Sean O’Neill
POLICE are warning that without a huge increase in manpower and money they will struggle to combat the threat of suicide bombings.

A senior figure at the centre of the fight against terrorism has told The Times that the Prime Minister and the Government are felt to have reneged on assurances to give police forces everything they need to fight the “war on terrorism”. Scotland Yard chiefs fear that the majority of extra resources for national security, to be allocated next month, will be awarded to the intelligence services, whose failings were exposed by the July London bombings.

Of the £135 million pledged to the war on terrorism at least £85 million will go to MI5 and MI6. The remaining £50 million has to be split between various agencies including the police and GCHQ.

Scotland Yard insists that it needs all that money to recruit more officers by the time new anti-terrorist measures are in place on the streets by April. However, senior police sources told The Times that they expect to be disappointed even though they believe that the nation is entering the most perilous 12 months since the upsurge in Islamist terrorism.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has already indicated that his force is fully stretched but has foiled three credible terrorist plots since the July attacks which killed 52 people in London.

They are understood to be a plan to set off car bombs, a missile attack and an attempt to obtain a cache of weapons. Sir Ian has revealed that the security services now send daily alerts to the police all of which have to be investigated. Before the 7/7 bombing the alerts were issued monthly. Resources will be further stretched when senior anti-terrorist officers leave frontline duties to take part in four major terrorist trials scheduled for 2006.

No arrests have been made in connection with the July 7 bombings and the suspected mastermind behind the plot has never been identified. The inquiry has, however, forced Scotland Yard to throw away the existing intelligence profile of a terrorist because none of the bombers fitted the model.

Senior officers are engaged in trying to draw up “a new topology” of the radicalisation of a young Muslim to attempt to stem the influence of extremists and prevent further attacks.

Scotland Yard also wants an initial £60 million to establish a new Counter Terrorist Command with 2,000 officers — an increase of 33 per cent on the current combined strength of the anti-terrorist branch and Special Branch. However, its case is unlikely to have been helped by the intervention yesterday of Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, who said the terrorist threat came from “fairly disorganised and small groups of disaffected people”.

He added: “This is not a great organised international conspiracy with orders flowing down the chain.”

Overall spending on domestic security will have risen from £1.5 billion in 2004-05 to £2.1 billion by 2007. The security budget has more than doubled since the September 11 attacks in the US.

December 28, 2005 at 01:57 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Torture valid as it saves lives, says MI5

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By David Sanderson
TORTURING detainees does help interrogators to obtain evidence that could save lives, according to Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the MI5 Director-General.

Dame Eliza also said it was impossible for agencies in this country to know if information supplied by foreign security services had been obtained by the use of torture. She added that to try to find out would jeopardise future relationships.

In a statement Dame Eliza cited the example of Kamel Bourgass, a failed asylum-seeker jailed this year for killing Detective Constable Stephen Oake and attempting to create ricin in his North London flat.

She wrote in the statement, obtained by Channel 4 News, that information about his intentions first came from an interview conducted by Algerian security services with Mohammed Meguerba, an al-Qaeda terrorist. The statement was submitted to the House of Lords, which is considering an appeal to a Court of Appeal ruling last year that British intelligence services can use information extracted under torture to detain suspected terrorists.

The appellants are foreign nationals, Algerians or other north Africans detained in Belmarsh under the indefinite de- tention of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001.

They are challenging the Government’s strategy of by-passing traditional standards of due process and the constraints of human rights law by allowing the executive to deport or detain without proof of wrongdoing.

October 21, 2005 at 06:35 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 has hundreds of terror suspects under surveillance, Clarke tells MPs

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Richard Ford
The Home Secretary revealed that a massive security operation prevented two attacks on London
HUNDREDS of people are being closely watched by police and the intelligence services in Britain because of the terrorist threat they pose.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, disclosed the scale of the huge surveillance operation as he told MPs yesterday that two terrorist attacks on London last year had been thwarted. He also admitted that he had imposed the first control order on a foreign-born British citizen and that more people suspected of involvement in terrorism could be placed under virtual house arrest.

Prisons had also become “hot spots” for radicalising young Muslims, he said. Mr Clarke, along with Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and Ken Livingstone the Mayor of London, appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is holding a public inquiry into the July terrorist attacks in London. Sir Ian came face to face with the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, minutes after telling the committee that the policy of shooting to kill suspected suicide bombers would remain.

Sitting only three three rows in front of three cousins of Mr de Menezes, who was shot dead at Stockwell Tube station on July 22, Sir Ian insisted that the tactic for dealing with suspected suicide bombers was “the least worst option”. Later, the cousins refused to meet Sir Ian when he sought to apologise personally to them.

In a statement, Alessandro Pereira, 25, Vivian Figueiredo, 22, and Patricia da Silva Armani, 31, called for the shoot-to-kill policy to be suspended.

Sir Ian said that the policy had been reviewed after the death of Mr de Menezes, 27, who was shot eight times. “We made a small number of administrative changes but the essential thrust of the tactics remains the same. There is no question that a suicide bomber, deadly and determined, who is intent on murder, is perhaps the highest level of threat that we face and we must have an option to deal with it.”

It would have been much worse to come before MPs and admit that the Metropolitan Police had no policy to deal with “suicide bombers on the loose”, he said. Sir Ian disclosed that the policy had been developed after the September 11 attacks in the United States. He said that the events of July meant that a “watershed” had passed and the issues should be publicly debated without disclosing the detail of tactics.

Earlier Mr Clarke told MPs: “There are certainly hundreds of people who we believe need to be very closely surveilled because of the threat they pose.” Home Office evidence added that a further 100 people living abroad had been identified because their behaviour could lead to them being excluded from entering Britain. Mr Clarke told MPs that two plots to mount terrorist attacks in London last year had been thwarted. He would not disclose any further details because of forthcoming trials.

He said there had been a “slight shift” in thinking that there was an international dimension to both the July attacks. “I certainly think the foreign link is a very important link to look at,” he said. “There has marginally been a slight shift of opinion towards there being international links.”

Mr Clarke said that Parliament was to be asked to look at new criteria for banning militant organisations. This is necessary because under the present criteria the Government will find it impossible to meet the Prime Minister’s promise to ban Hizb ut Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun.

He took a much more conciliatory attitude towards the judiciary than the Prime Minister and said he did not think that they operated in an “eccentric” manner in interpreting the Human Rights Act. The committee was also told about concerns of the role that prison was playing in radicalising young Muslims.

The Home Secretary refused to put a time on how long he expected the threat against Britain to continue. He said: “The fact is that we have what I would call a nihilist terrorist threat, something that will only be beaten by demonstrating it cannot succeed. Unlike the IRA, where there was a specific political ambition, we are facing a different kind of threat.”

THE BOMBINGS IN NUMBERS

4 bombs exploded

4 attempted attacks

54 killed in explosions

38,000 exhibits held in two warehouses

80,000 videos seized from CCTV cameras

1,400 fingerprints

160 crime scenes

£60 million cost to Metropolitan Police of which half is overtime and payments to other forces providing additional manpower

44,000 people tried to contact Metropolitan police bureau in hour after July 7 attack

72 faith hate crimes in London in three weeks before July 7

256 faith hate crimes in London in three weeks afterwards

October 2, 2005 at 12:31 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Defeating terror may mean giving up rights, MI5 warns

the Times

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
THE head of MI5 has publicly backed Tony Blair’s warning that the rules of how Britain combats the threat of terrorism have to change.

In a break with tradition, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director-General of MI5, allowed a confidential speech that she had given to Dutch intelligence officers to be published on the agency’s website yesterday. She gave a warning that an erosion of civil liberties might be necessary to stop more British citizens from being killed by terrorists.

Her intervention will provide ammunition for the Prime Minister and Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, in their battle with the courts over dealing with suspected terrorists. It will also bolster the Government’s struggle to introduce rules to make it easier to deport foreign preachers of hate.

The arrests of radical clerics, promised by Mr Clarke, have been delayed, and European ministers at an anti-terrorism conference in Newcastle this week frustrated his plan to store mobile phone records for a year.

Dame Eliza does not specify which human rights need to be compromised to help the intelligence agencies and police to cope with the threat of attacks, but her intervention is certain to intensify the debate among MPs and human rights groups.

Dame Eliza insisted that MI5 would not be “coerced” into sharing intelligence with friendly agencies.

Mr Clarke faced strong opposition to his call for tougher counter-terrorism laws after the July 7 and July 21 attacks in London, when he addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week.

Dame Eliza, speaking in The Hague on September 1 at a meeting to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service, made it clear that she had serious concerns about trying to counter the terrorist threat without greater powers, even if that meant encroaching on human rights.

Echoing words used by the Prime Minister, Dame Eliza said: “The world has changed and there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of what we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives.”

She admitted that the July attacks in London had been “a shock” to MI5 and to the police, but said that intelligence was always going to be fragmentary and incomplete.

She praised the response of the public to the bombings and people’s refusal to be cowed. Most people, she said, understood that the attacks were “on all our citizens, whatever the ethnic origins”.

The central dilemma for MI5 and other agencies, and for the Government, was trying to protect British citizens “within the rule of law when intelligence does not amount to clear-cut evidence and when it’s fragile”.

Dame Eliza said that she wished to do nothing that would damage “hard-fought-for [human] rights”. But trying to contain terrorism in a democratic society was “not straightforward”.

FROM TEACHER TO SPYMASTER
# The Honourable Dame Elizabeth Lydia Manningham-Buller was born on July 14, 1948, the second daughter of former Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor, Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne

# Educated at Northampton High School and Benenden School

# Taught at the Queen’s Gate school in London for three years, having read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, before joining the Security Service

# Senior liaison officer in Washington with the US intelligence community during the first Gulf War, before leading the new Irish counter-terrorism section from 1992

# Appointed Deputy Director-General of MI5 in 1997. Rose to Director-General in 2002, becoming the second woman in the role

# Married with five stepchildren

September 9, 2005 at 11:53 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Nazi terror campaign unwrapped

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

An MI5 officer described this device as "a hand grenade disguised as a slab of chocolate". There is no evidence any were made

Nazi terror campaign unwrapped
By Michael Evans
MI5 files reveal the James Bond-style antics of the Germans in the Second World War

GERMAN saboteurs during the Second World War developed a ruse to hit Britain with exploding chocolate bars and bombs disguised as tins of choice red plums in syrup.

Details of the bizarre assortment of shopping-basket bombs made ready for Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain have emerged in the latest release of MI5 files.

However, the Nazis’ home-made explosives appeared to be about as effective as some of their propaganda. A mock-up Evening Standard front page is identified as the “Late Blighters Final”. The fake London paper, dated February 17, 1940, claimed that the RAF had been massacred and that Parliament had held a secret session to deal with the crisis. An advertisement on the front advised: “Take French laxative — it will keep you on the run.”

Christopher Andrew, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Cambridge University and the official historian for MI5, said yesterday that some of the propaganda pamphlets “looked more like Monty Python”.

However, judging by the extensive use of household items as covers for explosive devices, the German secret service took the sabotage and propaganda business seriously.

According to MI5’s files, the would-be German saboteurs had developed timer bombs to be concealed beneath false bottoms in workmen’s mess tins, complete with sausage, mash and peas. Bombs were also designed for shaving soap, torch batteries, blocks of wood, coal, tins of fruit salad, leather belts, tins of frozen eggs and stuffed dogs. Hitler’s chocolate bombs were given special prominence in the MI5 files, with detailed drawings of how they should work.

Designed as grenades, each “bomb” was made of steel with a thin covering of real chocolate. “When the piece of chocolate at the end is broken off, the canvas is pulled, and after a delay of seven seconds the bomb explodes,” the MI5 file explained.

Professor Andrew said that some versions of the German boobytraps revealed in the newly declassified files, entitled “German camouflage for sabotage equipment”, smacked more of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than anything else.

“I believe German espionage and sabotage of the UK actually achieved 100 per cent incompetence in the Second World War,” he added.

Leaflets prepared for British eyes included pictures of healthy German babies contrasted with photographs of malnourished British children at death’s door. “Life is good for children in the Third Reich. Jolly, happy children live in Greater Germany,” one pamphlet boasted.

There were also references to Britain’s “economy recipes” to keep the people fed, including providing frogs for breakfast and shooting the deer in Richmond Park to be turned into sausages or pies. The MI5 files had one leaflet purporting to be from Hitler, which said: “You lice, vermin, spawn of prostitutes, how I hate you, Schweinehunde.”

September 4, 2005 at 08:14 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Ministers' U-turn on phone taps

Times Online - Sunday Times

David Leppard and David Cracknell
MINISTERS are preparing a U-turn over controversial plans for combating the threat of terrorism. The introduction of telephone intercept evidence in court is being considered by Charles Clarke, the home secretary, and the move is backed by MI5, the police and the Tories.

Britain and Ireland are the only countries to ban evidence from telephone taps in court prosecutions but even Liberty, the civil liberties group, has backed its use.

Clarke, who last month said he opposed the move, is now prepared to review the ban and next week is also expected to confirm a U-turn on plans to keep terror suspects under house arrest.

The about-turn on house arrest was agreed by the cabinet on Thursday after Clarke said the police and MI5 opposed the plans, which also faced defeat in the courts and parliament.

The move follows advice from the security services, which said the house arrest plans would create a focus for disaffection with radical protesters drawn to demonstrate outside suspects� homes. They believe the houses could become recruiting centres for Islamic fundamentalists, in the same way that internment without trial in Northern Ireland helped IRA recruitment.

While abandoning house arrest, Clarke is expected to announce that both foreign and British-born terror suspects could be subject to �control orders�, such as electronic tagging, curfews and limits on use of the internet.

Pressure on the home secretary to change his new policy � announced only last month � will continue this week when Lord Carlile of Berriew, the government�s independent adviser on terrorist legislation, will say he wants new laws to allow telephone intercept evidence to be used in court.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has told Tony Blair that, on balance, the spy agency favours the use of telephone tapping evidence. Her views, and those of senior police chiefs, such as Sir Ian Blair, the new Metropolitan police commissioner, are likely to persuade Clarke that the measure could be added as an amendment to government legislation.

This Friday Blair and Clarke will meet Michael Howard, the Tory leader, and David Davis, the shadow home secretary, at a Downing Street �terror summit� in an attempt to secure a cross-party consensus.

The Tories will say they are prepared to support the government if it drops the present house arrest proposals and promises to consider abandoning the ban on phone-tap evidence.

If there is agreement, the Tories will vote with the government to continue the temporary detention of 10 terror suspects in Belmarsh jail and Broadmoor top security hospital.

The law lords have ruled that their detention is illegal and the suspects are due to be released on March 10. o A man arrested at Heathrow on Tuesday has been charged with conspiring to cause an explosion between October 2003 and March last year. Salahuddin Amin, 29, who arrived on a flight from Pakistan, will appear before Bow Street magistrates in London tomorrow.

February 13, 2005 at 01:00 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 plants agents in regions to fight terror

Times Online - Britain

By Michael Evans, Frances Gibb and Sean O'Neill

DPP calls for stronger powers to hold suspects without trial

MI5 WILL deploy agents around Britain in a radical reorganisation of the intelligence service aimed at combating the threat of home-grown Islamist terrorists linked to the al-Qaeda network.
Teams of intelligence officers, surveillance experts, analysts and computer specialists will be permanently based in cities in the West Midlands, the North West and other areas where it is feared that extremists are radicalising Muslim youth.

The expansion is likely to be accompanied by the introduction of controversial new powers for police and prosecutors dealing with terrorist suspects. Ken Macdonald, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told The Times that he was seeking the right to hold suspects without charge for longer periods, to question them under compulsion and to enter into plea-bargain deals or to grant immunity from prosecution in return for information.

Mr Macdonald, previously a defence barrister who has represented terrorist suspects, said that there was �a pretty strong case� for giving prosecutors tougher powers.

The move by MI5, the Security Service, to establish a new network of bases outside London reflects fears that the main terrorist danger comes not from abroad but from within the UK.

Omar Sharif, one of two British suicide bombers who attacked a bar in Israel last year, was born and brought up in Derby where he associated with extremist groups. Three of the Britons released from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were young men from Tipton, West Midlands, arrested in Afghanistan.

The only men to have been convicted in the UK of al- Qaeda-linked activity are two Algerians living in Leicester who were accused of raising money through credit card fraud and organising travel for recruits to Afghan training camps. However, hundreds of young Britons are believed to have attended such camps and police and the security services are keen to gather more information about their whereabouts and activities.

The main purpose of the dispersal plan, which is being considered by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, is to improve co-operation with regional Special Branch police around the country.

�The scale of the terrorist threat is such that MI5 and the police need to be able to work together even more closely, which means that the Security Service must be dispersed in a different way, to be able to respond rapidly to any particular activity,� a Whitehall official said.

Government sources said that MI5 would set up a pilot scheme for expanding into the regions within a couple of months.

The search will also be on for secure premises to house the MI5 teams. Advances in information technology mean that they will have a guaranteed secure system for passing all intelligence about suspected terrorists back to Thames House, the MI5 headquarters in London, where it will be assessed by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, set up after the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.

The expansion of the domestic intelligence network has been made possible after a significant increase in MI5�s budget in the past 12 months. A further increase is expected to be announced by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, in his statement on government spending today.

MI5 has already begun a recruitment campaign to increase its size by 50 per cent to 3,000 staff and operatives by 2008. That expansion means that the Security Service will outgrow Thames House in London.

At present the budget for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the government communications headquarters based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is just under �1.3 billion, which includes capital spending amounting to �184 million. MI5�s share of the overall intelligence budget is not published but it is estimated to be around �200 million.

There are Special Branch units in each of the police forces in the UK, ranging in size from just a few officers to several hundred in London. However, MI5 will only be based in areas where there is the highest risk of terrorist activities.

The expansion will leave the Security Service with a similar set up to a number of intelligence agencies overseas. Canada, Australia and New Zealand all have major regional domestic intelligence centres as well as headquarters in their capitals.

July 11, 2004 at 07:58 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (1085) | Top of page | Blog Home

Dossier a mistake - Rimington

Telegraph | News | Dossier a mistake - Rimington

By Elizabeth Grice
(Filed: 12/06/2004)

The whole idea of releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was misguided and has damaged public confidence in the secret service, the former head of MI5 said yesterday.

"I feel the dossier was a mistake," said Dame Stella Rimington. "Formally putting intelligence into the public domain was not, in my view, a sensible thing to do.

"The whole point about intelligence is that it changes. What you think is the case today may be different tomorrow because of new information. The trouble is, if you put something out as a dossier, it is frozen in time."

She added: "That whole episode has probably damaged the reputation of the intelligence service, at least momentarily, in the eyes of the public, which is a great pity."

The author of the dossier was John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. In his report, Lord Hutton said Mr Scarlett - who is now chief of the Secret Intelligence Service - may have been "subconsciously influenced" by the Prime Minister's wish to make a tougher case for going to war.

Asked whether, as director general, she would have resisted Tony Blair's request for a dossier, Dame Stella said: "I can't say, as I don't know the circumstances . . . but I expect I would have thought: no good will come of this."

Dame Stella, MI5's first woman director general, is currently infiltrating the male-dominated genre of spy fiction with her debut thriller, At Risk, which features a female MI5 agent based on her younger self. The book had to have official clearance before publication this month.

June 11, 2004 at 09:10 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (36) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 to shake-up Commons security

MI5 to shake-up Commons security

The Government has called in MI5 to help tighten security at Westminster.
The move came after two men were charged in connection with Wednesday's purple flour bomb attack on Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons.

The move came after two men were charged in connection with Wednesday's purple flour bomb attack on Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons.

Commons leader Peter Hain has met with the deputy head of MI5 and radical new security measures are expected to be introduced following the incident during Prime Minister's Questions

Patrick Ronald Davis, 48, of Vale Avenue, Worthing, Sussex, and Guy Richard Harrison, 36, of Sopers Farm, Peppers Lane, Ashurst, Steyning, West Sussex, will appear at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London next Wednesday.

The two men were charged with "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress" at the Commons on May 19.

They face a maximum fine of �1,000 each and cannot be jailed for the offence with which they have been charged.

Mr Hain said the "old-fashioned culture of security" in the House would have to be modernised, and told MPs "big modifications in security" were on their way.

But Mr Hain, and MPs from all sides, said the public should still retain access to Parliament.

Mr Hain and MI5's deputy head discussed how a review of security at the Palace of Westminster could be speeded up.

It is widely expected that the security screen which currently encloses all but three rows of the public gallery in the Commons will be extended to block off potential access to the chamber from all sides.

May 20, 2004 at 07:00 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (34) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 security advice goes online

BBC NEWS | UK | MI5 security advice goes online

The security service MI5 has published its terrorist threat assessment and safety advice for the first time.
The details, available to the public on a new website, were previously given only to a few organisations.

But MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller said it was important to help more people - especially businesses - protect themselves.

The current assessment is that "the threat from international terrorism remains real and serious".

The warning comes as the US released figures which suggest terrorist attacks are at an international 30-year low.

MI5 says the main terrorist danger to the UK and to British interests overseas comes from al-Qaeda and associated groups.

"Osama bin Laden has in several statements publicly named Britain and British interests as a target, and encouraged attacks to be carried out against them," it says.

Al-Qaeda cells and supporters of affiliated groups are known to be active in the UK, MI5 confirms on the site.

It also publishes a top 10 list of safety tips for businesses and other organisations.

Bomb blast net curtains

These include advice to carry out risk assessments, look at mail-handling procedures, and check that staff are who they say they are.

Another section advises organisations on protection against flying glass.

Experts recommend applying transparent polyester anti-shatter film (ASF) to glass, to reduce fragments and splinters.

Timber-framed Georgian-style windows should also have bomb blast net curtains, says MI5.

For new buildings blast resistant laminated glass or secondary glazing should be included in the design.

The new site also lists the methods of attack most likely to be used by international terrorists, with bombings most common for al-Qaeda.

Shootings, abductions and kidnappings have also been used and although no such attacks have yet been unleashed on the UK "al-Qaeda may seek to use chemical, biological or radiological material against the West," said MI5.

Businesses are urged to protect information as terrorists are likely to try to get access to details that would be useful to them, by infiltrating organisations or getting help from an "insider".

Two sections of the website have been translated into Arabic to "build on the co-operation of the Muslim community" said the security service.

'Long overdue'

Additional languages will be added later.

Ms Manningham-Buller said MI5 wanted to share some of its information about the threats.

"For the most part details of our operations must and should remain secret," she said in a statement published on the website.

"But stopping terrorists is only one part of our collective defences against terrorism.

"Another part of our work is to use the knowledge we have about these organisations to provide sensible and practical advice on how best to protect yourself against these threats."

Dr James Hart, commissioner of police for the City of London, said the website would be "an enormous advantage" to the counter-terrorism effort.

Conservative homeland security spokesman Patrick Mercer welcomed the website, but said it was long overdue.

MI5 also lists Northern-Ireland related terrorism, espionage and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as continuing threats to the UK.

May 3, 2004 at 11:48 AM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (49) | Top of page | Blog Home

TERROR ADVICE PUBLISHED

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event

The MI5 security service has for the first time put information about terror threats on the internet.
Information on the site had previously been confined mainly to government departments and is mainly aimed at business.

It details information on how to prevent against Islamic and Northern Ireland-based terrorism.

MI5 Director General Eliza Manningham-Buller said: "Our aim is to help inform decisions people may need to take about security measures.

"The descriptions of the threats should give people a better feel for the range and nature of security issues we all face and help to place our security advice in context."

The advice featured general guidelines on reducing exposure to security threats and information about how to tackle specific risks, such as bombs and hackers.

In its section on suicide bombs, the MI5 website points out that "any bomber, whether driving a lorry or wearing an exploding body belt, needs physical access in order to achieve their end".

It goes on: "The principle behind protective measures should therefore be denial of access to anyone, or to any thing, that has not been thoroughly searched."

April 30, 2004 at 07:05 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (195) | Top of page | Blog Home

Universities spy on foreign students for MI5

Telegraph | Education | Universities spy on foreign students for MI5

By Michael Day and David Bamber
(Filed: 23/03/2004)

Universities are routinely spying on foreign students in Britain in order to help the authorities to keep potential terrorists under surveillance, the Telegraph has learnt.
Students' emails are being intercepted and mobile telephone calls listened to in an attempt to ensure that terrorists do not use universities as cover for their activities. Special Branch and MI5 are running the vetting operation in co-operation with most of the country's universities.

The scheme was quietly set up after the September 11 attacks in America, and goes much further than the controversial voluntary vetting system that was introduced in 1994 to prevent the transfer overseas of technology related to weapons of mass destruction.

Under that scheme, some universities agreed to contact the Government when assessing applications from potential students from certain rogue states. Since September 11, however, the institutions have been asked to go further and secretly gather and assess information on foreigners studying at their institutions. The universities cannot be named for legal reasons.

A close eye is kept on students from the "red flag" countries India, Pakistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Israel and North Korea. Applicants from those states are vetted, and asked to list their parents, previous study courses and employment. Those causing suspicion are then flagged for further monitoring.

Details of students' telephone numbers, email and home addresses are being passed by universities to the police, MI5 and the Foreign Office, said an official connected to British and American security. The official, who also has links to a leading university, said: "They are helping the security services look at students from the red flag countries. It's pretty well known that it's happening.

"With all the forms students fill in it is not difficult to get their mobile phone numbers or emails, or find out what kind of activities they are doing or where they hang out."

He said that the dramatic escalation in the terrorist threat since September 11 meant that spying on potential terrorists had become a key consideration. "You've got this situation now where if you're from a certain country you will be under suspicion. And the more Madrid-type incidents there are the more this will be stepped up."

Suspected terrorists who have studied in Britain recently include the lecturers Dr Azahari Husin, 45, who went to Reading University, and Shamsul Bahri Hussein, 36, who read applied mechanics at Dundee. They are wanted in connection with the Bali bombings in October 2002, when 202 people, including 26 Britons, died.

Ramzi Yousef, the al-Qa'eda plotter behind the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing that killed six people, studied engineering at Swansea.

One senior university official said: "Since September 11, we are co-operating with the security services in a much deeper way than before. We take it very seriously."

In many large universities it is official policy to have a senior academic who liaises with the security service and police about students they suspect are carrying out undercover activities. MI5 and MI6 have also used academics to recruit British students.

Now, Scotland Yard Special Branch officers monitor emails and mobile telephones and universities are expected to pass on suspicious meetings, activities or absences.

Several students are believed to have been ordered to leave Britain as a result of such monitoring, after it was discovered that they had links to extremist groups.

The policy has angered some critics. Ian Gibson, the Labour chairman of the Commons science and technology committee, said that his committee had heard evidence that foreign students were being spied on.

"I think there will be a number of universities that are doing this," he said. "It goes absolutely against the principle of freedom in academia and allowing people to associate with whom they like or think what they like."

A Conservative member of the select committee, however, was more pragmatic about the surveillance. Robert Key, the MP for Salisbury, said: "Given the current security situation I wouldn't be against it as long as the Government was in complete control of the situation."

Chris Weavers, a vice-president of the National Union of Students, said: "I think there needs to be very strong justification for any such surveillance. Just assuming that any individual from a certain country might be a risk is utterly unrealistic. However, he admitted: "We've seen many people from the United Kingdom who have been involved in terrorists attacks."

It would not be legal for the police or security service to intercept directly emails or telephone calls without a warrant or permission from the Home Secretary. Both, however, are exempt from the Data Protection Act.

� Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

April 5, 2004 at 09:31 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

Terror suspects to be held for three more days

Times Online - Home

FROM PA NEWS

Anti-terror police have been granted three more days to question eight young Muslims arrested on Tuesday. The extension came as a man was charged in Canada with aiding terrorist activity in London.

As the police investigation continued in London, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, the leader of the radical group al-Muhajiroun, said that Muslims could not co-operate with the authorities against other members of the faith.

The remarks came a day after the Muslim Council of Britain called on the Islamic community to play its part in fighting terrorism. Al-Mujiharoun has been accused of trying to recruit Muslim youth and take over the local mosque in Crawley, West Sussex, where at least three of the suspects were arrested.

The men being held in London, all British citizens of Pakistani origin, have been in custody since Tuesday morning when they were arrested during 24 raids across south east England. The arrests came as police found half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which they believe could have been used in a devastating blast.

Last night officers were granted an extension to hold the men under the Terrorism Act until Saturday afternoon, Scotland Yard confirmed. The eight suspects, aged 17 to 32, are held on suspicion of "being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism". Under the Terrorism Act police can apply for extensions to detain suspects up to a maximum of 14 days.

Sheikh Omar, who has denied accusations that his group recruited four young men from Crawley to fight for the Taleban in Afghanistan, told the BBC Radio Today programme: "Muslims have a unique way of life. Co-operating with the authorities against any other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy in Islam.

"Having said that, Muslims in Britain have the right to defend themselves, but without the use of violence. They can gather together, speak with the imams. The imams themselves should lecture the Muslim community, not the Muslim Council of Britain who are all of them a bunch of seculars."

The 44-year-old father of seven also accused Britain and the US of being involved in terrorism.

"I believe the culture of terrorism has become the fashion of the 21st century when the USA and Britain are involved in terrorist activity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vice versa, al-Qaeda are involved in terrorist activity in Manhattan and Madrid.

"At the end of the day, this is a cycle of violence. You need to look from both sides, you cannot ignore it."

Sheikh Omar, who denounced all violence in the interview, also complained that the media was "demonising" the Muslim community in Britain and that the high-profile arrest of the eight suspects had not helped relations with the Muslim community.

"The British authorities have the right to stop anybody they believe is committing crime. I'm not arguing that. But the way they did it, in very high profile fashion, and giving press details about it, it is clearly sending another message. The British Government is under tremendous pressures from foreign governments to tackle the voice of Islam which remains in the UK."

He also predicted that those arrested would be "released soon".

Shahid Malik, a member of Labour's governing National Executive Committee, told the same programme that the Muslim Council of Britain's actions had been "very appropriate, very responsible".

Mr Malik said: "We cannot live in a fantasy world. Half a ton of ammonium nitrate was found. I think that has been a big wake-up call and a shake-up call, and I think that has been the catalyst for the action of the Muslim Council of Britain."

Computer student Omar Khayam, 22, his brother Shujah Khayam, 17, and cousin Ahmed Khan, 18, from Crawley, Sussex have been named as three of the eight men being questioned at the high security Paddington Green police station in London.

Relatives of Mr Khan and the Khayam brothers have defended the trio, saying that they have done nothing wrong. Mr Khan's father Ansar Khan, 48, a taxi driver who works at Gatwick Airport, claimed that young Muslims were being brainwashed with "wrong" teaching in certain mosques in London but denied that his son and nephews were terrorists.

Anti-terrorist police have said that the alleged London bomb plot was not linked to the March 11 Madrid bombings which killed 191 people.

In Ottawa, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, 29, a software developer who was arrested on Monday is alleged to have participated in or contributed to the activities of a terrorist group and facilitated a terrorist activity between November last year and March 29 in Ottawa and London.

Mr Khawaja, a Canadian of Pakistani descent, recently travelled to London but said that he was meeting a prospective bride. He was remanded in custody until Friday.

April 1, 2004 at 07:58 AM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (38) | Top of page | Blog Home

Canada computer expert linked to British bomb plot

Times Online - Britain

By Richard Cleroux in Ottawa and Stewart Tendler

CANADIAN police have arrested a computer expert alleged to be linked to a plot by al-Qaeda supporters to plant a lorry bomb in the heart of London.

Mohammad Momin Khawaja was held in Ottawa after a raid co-ordinated with Britain's biggest counter- terrorist operation for decades.

Last night Mr Khawaja�s father, Mahboob, an outspoken critic of the United States, was reported to have vanished from his home in Saudi Arabia, where he is the administrator of a college.

His son was taken to court in shackles in Ottawa on Tuesday as 700 British police pounced on 24 homes and address across London and the Home Counties, arresting eight young Britons and seizing half a ton of ammonium nitrate.

The 29-year-old software designer, who was arrested at his office, works for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and had visited London recently.

He is facing two charges of being involved in terrorist activity in Ottawa and London between November 10 and March 29. He appeared in court wearing a bulletproof vest.

At one stage agents hid in a van parked close to his family�s home in an Ottawa suburb and, after the arrest, they questioned other members of the family and searched for explosives or bomb-making equipment. The house where Mr Khawaja lives in Orleans, just outside Ottawa, was also raided after being placed under surveillance for a month.

Mr Khawaja, who worked on contract for the Canadian Government, is suspected of having travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as making trips to Britain, where he has family. He was shadowed by undercover agents while he was here.

One of his brothers, Qasim, said that he had come to Britain to find a wife and denied any links to terrorism. The family has a Pakistani background and Mr Khawaja, according to schoolfriends, became increasingly religious as he got older.

Scotland Yard and MI5 refused to comment about Mr Khawaja�s possible role in the alleged lorry bomb plot, but Canadian officers told how, at Britain�s request, they kept him under surveillance for more than a month.

The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reported that the dwelling was owned by his father, whose book Muslims and the West: Quest for Change and Resolution was published in 2000.

It examines Islamic fundamentalism, global conflicts and the Western world�s understanding of Islam. Dr Khawaja has also written several essays criticising United States foreign policy and the war on terrorism.

He is said to be a highly respected member of Ottawa�s 10,000-strong Pakistani community and is presently teaching at a university in Saudi Arabia.

Dr Khawaja told the Edmonton Journal that allegations against his son were false. �My children are not involved in this kind of thing. We are Canadian citizens and have lived there for a long, long, time. I don�t know what is the reasoning behind this whole adventure that they are undertaking with the context of international security. This whole thing sounds like a hoax and a very unusual adventure on the part of police.�

Originally from Pakistan�s Kashmir region, Dr Khawaja has lived in Ottawa for about 30 years but has worked extensively abroad, including in the United States and Saudi Arabia.

He received his masters of political science in 1981 and his doctorate in social science in 2001, both from Syracuse University in New York State.

During the 1970s he worked for the Canadian Government as a policy analyst for the Canada Post. Neighbours said Dr Khawaja had been away for about a moth but normally lived at the house with his wife Azra and four adult children.Yesterday his son Qasim said that he and his sister were separated and questioned for seven hours and police from the Mounties� counter-terrorist unit took away computers and software. The Khawaja family moved to Canada in 1967 and all the children were born there.

In London, the eight suspects arrested in Operation Crevice faced a second day of questioning in the high- security wing of Paddington Green police station.

Two of the Britons had planned to leave the country next week.

Their families insisted that MI5 agents wanted to recruit Omar Khayam, 22, and his brother, Shujah, 17, as informants and had suggested that they go to Pakistan to infiltrate Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Ansar Khan, whose son, Ahmed, 18, is another of those being held, said: �They are teenagers. They can�t fix a tyre, they�re Manchester United fans and they�re nothing to do with terrorism.�

April 1, 2004 at 07:57 AM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Family claims MI5 ordered teenagers to go to Pakistan

Times Online - Britain

Daniel McGrory and Christopher Walker

THE family of one of the suspected Islamic terrorists arrested on Tuesday has claimed that MI5 agents had tried to recruit him as a spy.

Omar Khayam, a gifted young cricketer with ambitions to play for England, was arrested in Crawley, West Susex, as part of series of co-ordinated police raids.

His uncle, Sajad Ahmad, said the security services had urged the 22-year-old student to go to Pakistan next month with his younger brother. Mr Ahmad also said he had had three meetings in the past month with an MI5 agent he named as �Mr Goulding�, including a rendezvous in a supermarket car park.

He claimed MI5 knew his nephew had bought airline tickets for flights to Islamabad on April 6 for three of his relatives � all of whom are now in custody. The security services took the unusual step of denying that Mr Khayam was at any time working for them.

It it is claimed that security agents spoke to Mr Khayam when he returned from Pakistan four years ago. They assured him he was in no trouble and left him to pick up his studies. Since that brief introduction in 2000, Mr Khayam has enjoyed what can best be described as an intriguing relationship with the intelligence services.

At that time he appeared to be one of many teenagers who were impressed by followers of the radical al-Muhajiroun group who had set up their own meeting place in an anonymous semi-detached house in a Crawley backstreet.

Local imams fought off a radical group�s attempts to take over the main mosque in the town but say they were powerless to stop at least four young men from Crawley travelling to Afghanistan to fight for the Taleban. At least one of them, Yasir Khan, 26, was reportedly killed in the fighting. Last night the cleric that many in Crawley blame for recruiting their youth, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, denied he had any part in sending them to fight abroad. The 44-year-old father-of-seven told The Times he had briefly taught Mr Khayam in 2000. He said the engineering student �was a peaceful young man with family problems who left us because of those and not because of any differences in ideology�.

Senior diplomatic sources said that Mr Bakri�s public pronouncements advocating the training and despatch of young British Muslims to fight abroad had been noticeably watered down since the 2000 Terrorism Act had introduced penalties for such activities on British soil.

His website no longer boasts of the �martyrs� killed in fighting in Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan but Mr Bakri admits he has provoked controversy by �refusing to condemn or condone� Muslims who carry out suicide attacks.

Neighbours said yesterday that Mr Khayam spent long periods abroad, mostly in Pakistan. Mr Ahmad insisted that his nephew was not a security threat. He described him as a normal British youth.

Mr Ahmad said MI5 told his nephew there were people they thought were a threat to national security. �The MI5 agent said they do not have enough resources and asked if his nephews would leave (the country) to make it easier for them,� Mr Ahmed said.

�MI5 are satisfied my nephews wouldn�t do anything to hurt their country or threaten national security. They wanted them out of the way so they could concentrate on other people. They can�t cope with the problem as there are too many people.

�I told Omar and he agreed to go. But my younger nephew didn�t want to go, he became depressed and upset, and so we contacted a solicitor who spoke to MI5 for us. But in the end he had to go. The tickets were bought for April 6 to Islamabad for them to carry on their education for a year.

Mr Ahmad said that MI5 suggested his nephews were associating with the�wrong sort of people� and that a year in Pakistan would help to break that contact.

He showed the name and phone number of the MI5 officer with whom he claimed to have dealt, which were inputed into his mobile phone.

April 1, 2004 at 07:55 AM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (244) | Top of page | Blog Home

How surveillance ensnared enemy within

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory
Operation Crevice led to anti-terrorist raids across London's suburbs.

ANTI-TERRORIST officers had nervously kept their secret for weeks: how close Britain was to a devastating bomb attack. Only a handful of senior figures were trusted with the knowledge that a group of young Britons from half a dozen suburbs around London were finalising their plans to strike.

Most were living quietly with their parents or their young families. Bemused neighbours of the men said that that they had lived at the same addresses for years and had jobs such as taxi drivers and builders; one was an airport caterer. Another of the teenagers arrested yesterday was a student with ambitions to go to university.

All the young men were described as models of suburban respectability. But counterterrorist officers and MI5 suspected otherwise.

�This was truly the enemy within,� said one senior figure involved in what was named Operation Crevice. �This is proof that it�s not a question of if, it�s the when and the where.�

Even as leading politicians argued on television whether the public should be scared by repeated warnings from police and ministers about the inevitability of a terrorist strike, the plot was fast taking shape.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, was informed about it and gave permission for the telephones of some of the suspects to be tapped.

While all the speculation in recent days has been of possible British links to the train bombings in Madrid, the intelligence agencies have been concentrating on a number of terraced houses in locations such as Crawley, Slough and Ilford.

Undercover teams had been closely shadowing some of those arrested yesterday and are reported to have linked them to others in the group through telephone calls and e-mails.

At this stage, the counterterrorist teams said they did not know how any attack was to be carried out. Most of the men picked up yesterday were considered too young to have fought in Afghanistan or to have been schooled in bomb-making at al-Qaeda training camps. Police believe that they were recruited in Britain. Although most of them are of Pakistani origin, all were born in Britain or have spent most of their lives here.

The focus of the inquiry suddenly changed with a string of intercepted telephone calls inquiring about renting space in storage warehouses. These anonymous, prefabricated buildings are the perfect hiding place. They are large enough to store vehicles and, as witnessed yesterday, a builder�s sack full of industrial- strength fertiliser, without anybody paying much attention.

There are a number of Asian-owned building firms that use the Access storage centre in Hanwell where the fertiliser was found, so the sight of young men lugging a 6ft bag of what looked like builders� materials was not out of the ordinary.

The dilemma for the security authorities was when to move in. Operation Crevice differed from previous terrorist surveillance operations in that the men being watched were spread so widely around London and the Home Counties.

Detectives were understandably guarded about why they chose yesterday to make their move. One suggestion is that they intercepted a telephone call which indicated that the half tonne of fertiliser was about to be moved.

In its industrial packaging in the Access storage unit, it was no danger to anyone. Those planning to fashion it into a bomb needed somewhere to mix the fertiliser with fuel oil and the explosive charge, then pack it into a van or lorry to deliver it to the intended destination.

One of the many addresses reported to have been searched yesterday was a warehouse in Slough, half an hour�s drive from where the fertiliser was stored. Police declined to say if it was from here that they suspected the bombmaker was to operate.

After intense discussions, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, and Assistant Commissioner David Veness, Scotland Yard�s most experienced terrorist expert, chose Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, for the early-morning raids. They had to co-ordinate in secret with five separate forces and the intelligence agencies for the biggest raid seen in Britain since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The 700 or so officers involved were told to gather before dawn at various assembly points around the Home Counties, where they were briefed as to their targets. Most of those involved were not told details of a possible bombing plot. The first raids began at 4.30am and by the end of the morning police and forensic science teams had moved in to 24 premises. Seven of those were in Crawley. One of the properties was in Juniper Close, where the homeowner was said by neighbours to work for a catering firm which prepares inflight meals for airlines at Gatwick airport. The man, of Pakistani origin, was said to live there with two sons and a daughter.

Another of the men taken into custody was arrested at the Holiday Inn at Gatwick, where police sealed off two rooms on the fourth floor while they were searched by explosives experts.

Curious onlookers were kept away from two neat homes in Gossops Green, where one of the neighbours, Martyn Tidd, 46, said that the father and sons who lived there all worked for a minicab firm which operated from Gatwick. Six more addresses raided were in the Bury Park area of Luton.

Bystanders in Overstone Road watched as an elderly Asian couple who had lived in the street for about 15 years were led away by police. Officers also searched a property across the road that the couple were said to have bought for their married daughter. A middle-aged woman and a man in his 20s left the house carrying an overnight bag as police made it clear that none of them had been arrested.

Anthony Pisano was leaving for work when he saw police in riot gear bursting into a flat near his home in Hencroft Street South, Slough, not far from Heathrow.

He could not remember the name of the tall, slightly built man of North African origin who lived in the converted property, but Dr Pisano described him as being in his late 20s.

On the few occasions that the pair chatted, the man had apologised for the noise he was making but explained that he was renovating the flat where he lived with his sister.

Near by, in Warrington Avenue, Slough, neighbours watched as forensic science teams investigated a white, pebble-dashed, semi-detached house.

When Joey Baynham, 19, looked through his bedroom window in Grovelands Road, Reading, and saw police break down the door of a house, he assumed that it was a drugs raid. An Irish woman who lived there, and who is thought to work at a school in the area, did not appear to be at home. Neighbours said she had a young lodger of Pakistani origin staying there.

Senior officers made clear last night this was just the first phase of Operation Crevice. Searches will continue today at all the properties that were raided.

Officers admited that they could not be certain that others involved in any plot may still have access to other homemade explosives. Above all, they do not yet know the targets the men may have had in mind.

March 30, 2004 at 11:03 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

The truck bombers of suburbia

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory

Eight young British Muslims questioned

Explosives found in 27 raids around London

A PLOT by al-Qaeda supporters to set off a massive lorry bomb was foiled yesterday after the biggest counterterrorist operation seen in Britain since September 11.

MI5 agents and anti-terrorist officers were questioning eight young Britons last night after the discovery of the ingredients for a half-tonne fertiliser bomb in a storage unit in West London. The bomb would have been five times the size of the devices used in the al-Qaeda attack on Bali, which claimed more than 200 lives.

Seven of the men arrested are 22 and under, including a 17-year-old student who was seized at an address in Slough. The other man is 32 years old.

The police, who believe an al-Qaeda inspired operation is by far the most likely explanation for the intended attack, fear that terrorists were intending to kill hundreds of civilians with an attack on a �soft target� such as a shopping centre. Only last week Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that terrorists would target crowded bars, nightclubs, pubs and shopping centres in an attempt to cause mass casualties. He was criticised by David Blunkett for saying that an attack was �inevitable�.

Sir John did not mention that MI5 and five forces were involved in Operation Crevice, which culminated in yesterday�s arrests.

Mr Blunkett praised what he called a first-class police and security operation. In a statement yesterday, he said: �I would like to record the Government�s thanks to all those from the police and security services who work so tirelessly and bravely on our behalf.�

At dawn yesterday 700 officers raided 24 homes and businesses across London and the South East. Police marksmen were on standby as arrest teams and search units raided properties in Ilford, East London, and Uxbridge, Colindale and Hanwell in West London. Other addresses around the M25 were in Luton, Crawley in West Sussex, Horley in Surrey, Slough and Reading. Experts say that the explosive was the same type used by al-Qaeda sympathisers last November in their attacks against targets, including the British Consulate, in Istanbul. Police did not identify the suspected target for the bombers here, but a security source said they are confident that they have the ringleader of this plot among those being held in custody.

With the Easter holidays approaching, security will be tight at many civilian targets including football grounds and shopping centres. Security arrangements for this weekend�s Grand National and other sporting events are certain to be reviewed.

All those in custody in the high-security wing at Paddington Green police station are British citizens, and the majority are of Pakistani origin. The biggest discovery in the raids was at the Access storage company in Boston Road, Hanwell, where police found the ammonium nitrate. The fertiliser could easily have been bought on the internet and would have cost about �60.

The supplier of the chemicals has been traced but detectives are concerned at the lack of effective control on the sale of a chemical that is used to make military explosive.

This same mixture has been used regularly by al-Qaeda groups since their 1998 lorry bomb attacks on two US embassies in East Africa and in the bombings of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia, where Western workers live.

The storage unit is a short drive from Heathrow, and at least three of those arrested live close to Gatwick and addresses were raided near Luton airport. Police do not believe that any of the three airports were the intended target.

The man leading yesterday�s operation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, took the unusual step of making a public statement within a few hours of the arrests in an attempt to calm public concerns.

He said the operation was part of �continuing and extensive inquiries by police and the Security Service into alleged international terrorist activity and I must stress that the threat from terrorism remains very real. The public must remain watchful and alert.�

More arrests are expected. The police said they were in contact with Muslim leaders in the areas raided to brief them about the reason for the arrests and to assure them that this was not an attack on the Islamic communities living there.

March 30, 2004 at 11:02 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

Telling tales: the spy chief�s novel

Times Online - Sunday Times

Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

THE dress is Zilkha, Ronit Zilkha. The car is an Audi quattro, not an Aston Martin, and she is more likely to have a dab of perfume behind her ears than a spy gadget up her sleeve.
Welcome to the secret agent world of Liz Carlyle as created by Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, in her debut novel.

At Risk, to be published this summer, is a fast-paced thriller with a 34-year-old female spook as its heroine. She inhabits a world that Rimington, who retired as MI5�s director-general in 1996, is uniquely qualified to describe.

If Rimington�s brief was to free the spy novel from male bondage, it is mission accomplished. She has said in the past that Ian Fleming�s 007 �had damaged the image of MI5� because he was such a male chauvinist. He fostered the notion that women, except for a few secretaries, do not work in the intelligence services.

Carlyle is a thoroughly modern Smiley, equally at home talking about Afghan guerrillas or the Foo Fighters and ready to discard her married lover, a profile writer for The Guardian newspaper.

Whereas 007 wore Cuban heels concealing espionage devices, Carlyle sports pointed plum-coloured shoes with kitten heels that are apt to get wedged in the cracks between paving stones.

She is more like Zoe, played by Keeley Hawes in BBC1�s drama Spooks. She is intelligent but not overtly so and relaxes by lying in the bath �listening to La Boh�me and trying half-heartedly to make sense of an article in The Economist�.

Her smart dress even draws sarcastic fire from her superiors in the intelligence services. �Ah. You�re running an agent in Harvey Nichols,� says one.

Rimington, who was accused of spilling state secrets when she published her autobiography Open Secret three years ago, plans to write a series of novels featuring Carlyle.

The book is not without humour. Rimington names one of her baddies after Ray Gunter, a minister in Harold Wilson�s government of the 1960s when the secret service became overly suspicious about alleged Soviet sympathies among Labour politicians.

Rimington also gets her revenge on David Shayler, the former MI5 officer who was prosecuted for publishing his concerns about the intelligence service�s alleged abuse of its powers and who called her a hypocrite for penning her memoirs. For the Christmas party at MI5, where staff drink from FBI mugs and store their pencils in Fortnum & Mason jars, 50 agents plan to upset their section head by donning rubber masks bearing Shayler�s face under a Santa hat.

The plot of At Risk concerns an Al-Qaeda-type terrorist who is smuggled into Britain but becomes a far more dangerous threat when he teams up with an �invisible�.

An invisible is CIA talk for a terrorist who, because he or she is an ethnic native of the country, can cross its borders unchecked, move around unquestioned and infiltrate its institutions with ease.

Carlyle is a member of the Joint Counter-Terrorist Group, created by the government immediately