Jihadi Du Jour: MI5: over 1,600 people planning terror plots

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller calls it as she sees it.

The head of MI5 has warned the agency is dealing with up to 30 alleged "mass casualty" terror plots in the UK and abroad involving more than 1,600 individuals.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said MI5 and the police are tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who are "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts".

She said the terror plots involved plans for suicide attacks with some being directed by al-Qaeda.

Dame Eliza's assessment came in her first public speech since the July 7 terror attacks last year, to an invited audience of academics in east London.

She warned of the prospect that weapons of mass destruction could be used in future terror attacks in the UK.

Dame Eliza said: "Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices, but I suggest tomorrow's threat will include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology."

She told her audience that MI5's caseload of UK-based terror sympathisers - many of them British citizens - had increased by 80 per cent since January.

She voiced concern that many of those involved were young men and teenagers as young as 16, who were being radicalised by friends and by material viewed on the internet.

Dame Eliza quoted statistics suggesting there was widespread sympathy for terrorism within Britain.

"If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July bomb attacks in London were justified," she said.

Dame Eliza added: "More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers."

She said she was alarmed by the "scale and speed" of radicalisation in the wake of the July 7 bombings.

Dame Eliza said: "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 citizens or their early death in a suicide attack or on a foreign battlefield.

"Killing oneself and others in response is an attractive option for some citizens of this country and others around the world.

"(The) threat is serious, is growing, and will, I believe, be with us for a generation. It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents. It aims to wear down our will to resist."

Some reaction to this UK Terror Alert here:

DAME PAULINE NEVILLE-JONES, FORMER CHAIR OF THE JOINT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

"If I were in her shoes I think that I would want the citizenry of this country to have some understanding of the security situation that we face.

"I think the days are long gone and I think welcomely long gone, when it was right for government to say 'You can rest secure, government knows what it's doing, we will keep you safe and don't bother your little heads'.

"We can't rest secured. We are sufficiently vulnerable, she knows that she can't necessarily guarantee always to intercept, and therefore I think the right thing is to let us know what she considers the situation to be."

Dame Pauline said that Dame Eliza was indicating what she believed was an issue that needs to be tackled partly by government and partly by "society as a whole".

"It's very, very important we don't treat the roots of this issue as being something where it's for the Muslim communities - and they are plural - to conform themselves somehow to a settled community that has its own ideas," Dame Pauline said.

"We've got to do this together."

Could this be too little too late for the severely radicalized UK?

IHTISHAM HIBATULLAH OF THE BRITISH MUSLIM INITIATIVE

Ihtisham Hibatullah said he was concerned about the stigmatisation of the whole Muslim community following Dame Eliza's claim that 200 groups were involved in plotting.

He said doing so was "completely unfair and unjust against the whole Muslim community" and accused the government and security services of "dragging the Muslim community along in such a way where it creates more hatred towards the community and Islam."

"For the government to accuse 200 organisations and more than a thousand individuals in the community with plotting to endanger the country's security implies that the whole of the Muslim community is under suspicion, which is completely unacceptable.

"The Muslim community is working with all faith groups and different spectrums of the community to form an alliance to create an atmosphere of dialogue."

Indeed I think in the UK the whole Muslim Community is duly under suspicion. What is needed is a little less talk and a lot more action. The UK has been asking the Muslim community to cleanse itself of these nuts. The response has benn only more Muslim councils that want to be a part of the process, or direct the process via the backdoor. At least the UK Government has the nerve to say it. Can you imagine the bloviating from CAIR and the ACLU if such bluntness were acceptable here in America? No, in the US, Islam is the "religion of PC".

"30 more years" at HotAir.com.

Labels: ACLU, Britain, CAIR, muslims, Nuclear Threat, radicalization, UK