UK intelligence officials say Britain has become “al-Qaeda target No. 1,” and judge Britain’s “home grown” terrorists to be organized, trained, and controlled either directly from Pakistan or via Pakistani networks in Britain.
Until now, intelligence services thought British Islamist terrorists had no hard links to al-Qaeda and were believed to have acted alone or in self-constructed cells.
Senior military intelligence officers now believe the July 7 bombers received crucial weapons training in Pakistan.
MI5 also believes the number of extremists is rising. It keeps very close tabs on more than 1,000 extremists, and 14,000 British Muslims are considered potential terrorist threats.
A significant number get radicalized and recruited on university campuses. At least 13 convicted Islamist terrorists and four suicide bombers have been students at British universities.
Radical Islamist student societies operate websites, hosted by university servers, which direct visitors to organizations that glorify jihad and terror.
Academic institutions should surely help protect Britain from those who clearly do not believe in democracy, are not civilized, and who try to harm us.
The writer is director for the Brunel Center for Intelligence and Security Studies.