Muslims help on Manchester attack's extremism
Amidst the BBC News "rolling" coverage of the Manchester attack is this:
Quote:
A Muslim community worker has told BBC News that members of the public called the police anti-terrorism hotline warning about the Manchester suicide bomber’s extreme and violent views several years ago.The BBC also understands that Abedi was in Manchester earlier this year when he told people of the value of dying for a cause and made hardline statements about suicide operations and the conflict in Libya.
The community worker – who did not want to be identified – said two people who knew Salman Abedi at college made separate calls to the police.
They had been worried that “he was supporting terrorism” and had expressed the view that “being a suicide bomber was OK.” The friends had argued with him, telling him he was wrong but had become so concerned they contacted the police.
The community worker told the BBC “all of the publicity is about Muslims not coming forward and this shows that they are coming forward and expressing their concerns.”
The calls are thought to have been made around five years ago after Abedi left school, where he was known to have smoked marijuana and mixed with gangs in south Manchester.
Greater Manchester Police said they would not comment on the claims.
Link and item is at 1635hrs:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-en...ester-40007967
Listen to the people they know
Jason Burke, in The Observer writes again on the 'first line' of defence in CT, after the recent attacks in the UK and his article ends with:
Quote:
The only way potential attackers will be identified before they kill and maim is through the most old-fashioned means one can imagine: someone warning authorities about what they plan to do. This can be people in the workplace, the mosque, or at school. Research tells us that more than 70% of Islamic militants who operate alone tell someone of their plans. The first line of defence against Islamic militancy is not our crash barriers or covert operations, nor armed cops or MI5, it is a potential terrorist’s brother, mother, partner or friend.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ly-and-friends
A mother's tale from B'ham
The reverse of telling the authorities. A mother in Birmingham (UK) whose son left for Syria and died there fighting with ISIS:
Quote:
The clues were difficult to decipher; their contexts always allowed for other, perfectly innocent explanations.....With hindsight, I should have questioned more his distancing of himself from his usual social group — and, possibly, the watchful eye of his father. Naïvely, perhaps, I had passed off the changes in Rasheed as his exploring and forming an identity away from his parents. It was the biggest mistake and regret of my life. But ask any parent of teenagers: Would you have done better?
Link:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/o...dist.html?_r=0
The mother told the police he had gone to Syria and went onto found a group to help families in such predicaments.
Pregnant wife 'snitches on' Muslim convert 'trying to join IS'
A BBC report on a current trial of a Muslim convert who was radicalised quickly and left for Syria - where he was stopped and returned to the UK. It appears he had an arranged Muslim marriage, who disliked his extremism and told someone and two undercover MI5 agents become his trusted friends.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...yside-40863216
It almost fits what the UK's most senior CT police officer referred to in a Q&A:
Quote:
Q: Police now work closely with MI5, sitting, literally, alongside them, so you’re getting all that intelligence. But is it harder to counter the threat from lone actors, because, by definition, they are loners and are working alone?
A: Well you can get intelligence about loners but it comes from different sources. So many of the lone actors have at some stage in their radicalisation connected into extremist groups in this country; or connected online to some of the propaganda being put out by Isis and other groups. So that gives us opportunities but also, of course, intelligence comes from communities. So, we’ve got examples where an escalating threat from lone actors has been spotted first by someone in the community who’s picked up the phone to us and that makes a difference. So when I talk about a “whole system effect”, I think expecting a small group of a few thousand police officers and security service officials to be able to solve this is not realistic. We will do everything we can to improve but we’re going to need that wider input from public and other agencies.
Link:http://news.met.police.uk/blog_posts...errorism-60655
Update 21/12/17 after court:
Quote:
Watson, 27, who held "deep radicalised views" was jailed for five years
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...yside-42440771
UK: public tips up 600% recently
The police-operated ATS Hotline after a FOI request has reported:
Quote:
Calls to a dedicated police hotline rocketed by more than 600 per cent in just six months as thousands of potential leads poured in.
(Later) It received 22,729 calls in the year to the end of June 2016 - almost double the tally of 11,892 in the previous 12 months. The service took 21,596 calls from July 2016 to June 2017.
Link:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7897346.html
I wonder if calls to MI5 (Security Service) have also gone up.
Community reporting: UK academic report
Nearly missed this report on Anglo-Australian academic research on 'community reporting'; the Australia research came first and was built upon here:
Quote:
It expands and develops the approach of the Australian study through a sample of 75 community members and professional practitioners, with a particular focus on young adults, matching the demographic profile of many plotters and those who travelled to Syria. The UK study’s preliminary findings suggest we need to re-examine policy and practice approaches around two key issues.
Two points emerged:
Quote:
First, sharing concerns with authorities about an ‘intimate’ is likely to be the last resort, with respondents much more likely to seek help from figures of authority within communities first....Second, reporting processes around terrorism are not clearly understood by community members or professional practitioners and need to be both strengthened and clarified. As in Australia, respondents in our current study express a strong preference for face to face reporting – they largely do not trust on-line or telephone based methods.
Link to summary article:https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/...ity-reporting/ and the full report (not yet read) is:https://crestresearch.ac.uk/resource...ds-full-report
(Added) A statement in November 2017 by a senior police officer, responsible for CT; which in sum says:
Quote:
funding cuts for local policing will harm intelligence efforts
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...head-neil-basu
Man jailed for online terrorist offences - after an alert
Rather unusual as the discovery was made by a non-UK national:
Quote:
Hussain's activities came to the attention of counter terrorism police after a man reported receiving an email from him. The court heard how the witness, who lives outside the UK, emailed the Home Office in March 2017 after receiving a private message on Facebook, from someone he did not know, inciting him to join Daesh.
Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: "This investigation started with one conscientious individual trusting his instincts and reporting something suspicious. He could have ignored the message Hussain sent him but instead he took a screenshot of the message and contacted the UK authorities immediately. It is in great part thanks to him that police were able to bring Hussain to justice."
Link:http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-j...ffences-296161
Back to the 21/7/2005 London attack
Came across this via a pointer in a journal article and it refers to the unsuccessful London bombings:
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Said is wanted in connection with a blast on a No 26 bus in Hackney Road. In a statement, the family of the 27-year-old said that as soon as they saw his picture on news reports they contacted police....Said's family said they moved from Eritrea to the UK in 1990. They said he left home in 1994, lives alone and is "not a close family member."
Link (background): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Jul...ondon_bombings and story:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4718797.stm
The foster mother who didn't know
Last week an Iraqi teenage asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, who had been in foster care for two years, was convicted for a bomb attack on the London Underground, the bomb was faulty and only partly worked, injuring fifty-one. The foster parents knew nothing about his intentions, nor that for a year he had been subject of a counter-radicalisation action. Hassan awaits sentencing.
The carers were interviewed by ITV and this link is a detailed account. It ends with:
Quote:
We've asked ourselves time and time again 'what did we miss?
Link:http://www.itv.com/news/2018-03-19/s...suspected-him/
The BBC News report is shorter:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43463856
Widow of Westminster attacker 'sorry she was not more vigilant'
Both the mother and wife of Khalid Masood, who killed four pedestrians and a police officer in a car and knife attack @ Westminster Bridge and the Palace of Westminster in March 2017, have offered their evidence on what they knew beforehand.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ry-personality
Man charged over US mid-term elections 'bomb plot'
A "lone wolf" example of a plot detected and in the USA:
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A man who planned to blow himself up in Washington DC on the day of next month's mid-term elections has been held and charged, US prosecutors say.They say Paul Rosenfeld, 56, built a 200lb (91kg) explosive device and wanted to detonate it on the National Mall in the capital on 6 November.
They say he wanted to draw attention to his belief in "sortition" - a political theory that advocates the random selection of government officials.
This came after an individual had received letters and text messages from the suspect about the plot, and had alerted the authorities.
Link:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...on-day-n918771 and cited text from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45818990
After Melbourne: a view from Australia Part 2
From an Australian newspaper, written after the Melbourne street attack (where three were stabbed, one died and culprit was shot dead):
Quote:
Most terrorism experts are agreed that the untempered lecturing of Muslim communities is counterproductive. It denies their history of co-operation and hints at some sinister recalcitrance. But it’s unlikely that these very public addresses are intended for Islamic leaders – they’re meant to reinforce a general impression of the government’s strength, even if it may perversely undermine it.
I spoke with one federal police officer with extensive experience in community policing and liaison with mosques. “Generally, the relationship between police and the Muslim community is good,” they said. “Counterterrorist and intelligence agencies understand that we get a lot of our intelligence from within the Islamic community, so it is important to foster a strong and lasting relationship. Generally, there is a multicultural liaison officer in each city, [for example] the City of Dandenong, that works directly with all the different communities and their leaders. These liaison officers are often the first point of contact between the community leaders and police. Some of the mosques tend to not be as receptive and are sceptical of police, while others have integrated well and collaborate well with police, sharing information openly and freely.
“My concern from a policing perspective is to not demonise the Muslim community. They are our primary source of intelligence in relation to radicalised individuals. I don’t think the greater community appreciate that this is where we get our intelligence from – members within that community. They have to continue to feel comfortable in coming forward and co-operating with police.”
Peter Lentini reinforced this: “The record needs to be set straight: when these problems started... take an investigation like [Operation] Pendennis – they actually began with tips from Muslim communities themselves. So that myth is shattered. That’s extremely important. It demonstrates that Muslims follow the law. I’ve written extensively on this, as have others. Many of these people have come from circumstances that anyone in a uniform is someone who may harm them. So for them to come to police, it’s a big vote of confidence in the state.
Link:https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/...15423732007149
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Norwegian contribution to discovering terrorist plots
Id'd via Twitter a very short report by their Security Service (PST) and in Norwegian - thankfully someone has done an English summary! The report has the graphics which can be matched to the English text below.
Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian SME commented on Twitter:
Quote:
Short but valuable new report by Norwegian Security Service @PSTnorge on how terrorist plots are discovered. It’s the first such study I’ve seen based on classified data (as opposed to data from media sources).
Quote:
The report is based on 91 disrupted plots/prevented attacks in 13 Western countries between 2012 and 2019, and includes both Islamist and right wing extremist plots. Of the 91 disrupted plots, 43% were discovered by intel/security services, and 28% by regular police. The remaining 29% were initiated by information from private persons (18%) and employees in public/private sectors (11%). The report sought to identify the the "initial indicators" that first had alerted the authorities to attack planning, using 6 categories: Expressed threat(s); a tip from a family or friend; a tip from a third party; online activity; regular police work; or other. Online activity (45%) and third-party tip-offs to authorities (23%) were most common, followed by tip-offs from family/friends (10%), regular police work (9%) and expressed threats (3%). They assess the actual % of family/friends aware of terror plans to be higher. Based on this, PST has listed certain behaviors, statements and material acquisitions they want the public to be aware of and notify them of. This list has been communicated in several Norwegian news outlets this week.
Link: https://www.pst.no/globalassets/arti...rrorangrep.pdf
Update Norwegian contribution in English
The blogger Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has translated the PST study. His introduction cited in part:
Quote:
The study covers 91 disrupted terrorist plots in the period 2012-2019 whereby the initial indicators of how the plots were uncovered are known to the Norwegian Police Security Service. Among other things, the study argues from the data it examines that family and acquaintances of would-be terrorists in particular need to be more willing to step up and inform the authorities. The study concludes with an outline of scenarios (e.g. expression of extremist attitudes and acquisitions of things like firearms for no obvious reason) where people should inform the police and security services of any suspicions they might have, acting on instinct even if they are not fully sure.
Link to translation (with original shown):http://www.aymennjawad.org/2020/02/n...rvice-study-on
Tpping off the authorities: UK polling data
As part of a wider review of the UK Prevent programme CREST, a UK policing and crime "think tank" have commissioned opinion polling. For this topic it found that:
Quote:
Some 67% of British Muslims surveyed said they would tip off the authorities about someone being radicalised, compared with 63% of the wider public.The survey also found: 63% of Muslims and 67% of the wider public worried about Islamist extremism; 64% of Muslims and 71% of the wider public said they trusted the police
Link to report:https://www.crestadvisory.com/post/e...sm-and-prevent and link to BBC News story:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51676923