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BBC News 10 November 2006 Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller has given a stark warning that the police and intelligence services are tracking some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1,600 identified individuals. These are "actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas", she said.
"What we see at the extreme end of the spectrum are resilient networks, some directed from al-Qaeda in Pakistan, some more loosely inspired by it, planning attacks including mass casualty suicide attacks in the UK. "We cannot focus on everything so we have to decide on a daily basis with the police and others where to focus our energies, whom to follow, whose telephone lines need listening to, which seized media needs to go to the top of the analytic pile. "Because of the sheer scale of what we face - my service has seen an 80% increase in casework since January - the task is daunting. "We shan't always make the right choices. And we recognise we shall have scarce sympathy if we are unable to prevent one of our targets committing an atrocity." A particular concern expressed by the security service chief was the need to deal with radicalisation - especially amongst the young. "It is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalised and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow UK citizens. "Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers." Dame Eliza has been director general of MI5 since 2002 and, prior to that, deputy director general for five years. Overall she has spent 32 years in the UK intelligence community. |
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