BRITAIN’s most senior police officer at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks has warned that there are at least 100 Al-Qaeda trained fighters “walking Britain’s streets”.
Sir John Stevens, who retired as Metropolitan police commissioner at the end of January, fears the true figure of those potentially able to carry out attacks is probably nearer 200.
[I still think this is a conservative estimate, also.--Jen]
“Though they haven’t yet subjected Britain to horrors such as 9/11 or the Madrid bombings, make no mistake they would if they could,” said Stevens. “If I heard on my car radio that they had pulled off a terrorist atrocity at last, I’d be horrified but not in the slightest bit surprised.”
Stevens’s latest assessment of the threat posed by fundamentalist adherents of Osama Bin Laden comes in a newspaper article in which he says the government’s prevention of terrorism bill is “vital” legislation.
[There's been a real brouhaha in Britain over this proposed terrorism bill which makes our domestic whining about the Patriot Act look like nothing.]
“The main opposition to the bill is from people who simply haven’t understood the true horror of the terrorism we face.
“For the safety of the vast majority, occasionally we will have to accept the infringement of the human rights of high-risk individuals.”
[For the not-too-bright, which would include most of the Left, this means if you don't fit the er...profile, shall we say?, you don't have to worry about your civil liberties being infringed.]
[...]
The figures are thought to be based on the numbers of “graduates” who returned to Britain from Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan until they were destroyed by coalition forces during the war of 2001-02.
[AQ has set up other training camps since, certainly in Saharan Africa and there are probably others we don't know about yet.]
Senior security figures including Sir Ian Blair, Stevens’s successor as commissioner, believe the radicalising influence of such “jihadists” — some of whom have also fought for the Muslim cause in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir — provide the core of the threat to Britain.
Stevens said the suspects held without trial at Belmarsh prison in southeast London remain a threat and should not be freed despite a ruling by the law lords in December that the men’s human rights had been infringed.
“I have read every word of the evidence and intelligence against them. I know that for the safety of innocent people they should remain under lock and key. They simply should not be at liberty in this country. It is madness,” Stevens wrote in the News of the World.
[...]
The former commissioner, who shared briefings with the prime minister from MI5, MI6 and Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch, said “huge amounts of intelligence” had been provided by Muslims themselves, appalled at atrocities committed in the name of Islam.
[If true, this is definitely progress!]
“That intelligence proves these fanatics must not walk our streets. They must be locked up — or kicked out of the country.”
If Britain has 200 "sleeper" AQ terrorists, the USA must have 2,000 or more.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty." and at no time is that more true than right now;
all of we citizens need to be on red alert for these evildoers among us--they're still here and still planning attacks to kill us here at home.
