LONDON, 11 November 2006 — British authorities are tracking almost 30 terrorist plots involving 1,600 individuals, the head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency has said. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said many of the suspects were homegrown British terrorists plotting suicide attacks and other mass-casualty bombings.
Prime Minister Tony Blair backed the assessment of his spy chief and warned the terrorist threat “will last a generation.”
In a speech released by the agency yesterday, Manningham-Buller said the MI5 had foiled five major plots since the July 2005 bomb attacks on the London underground train network.
Speaking to a small audience of academics in London on Thursday, Manningham-Buller said officials were “aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy.”
“What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten?” she said. “No, nearer 30 that we currently know of.”
She added: “Today we see the use of homemade improvised explosive devices, but I suggest tomorrow’s threat will include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.” She said the MI5 and the police were tackling 200 cells involving more than 1,600 individuals who were “actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas.”
The threat includes “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”
Senior anti-terrorist officials have previously said that they have foiled several plots since the July 2005 attacks, but this is the first public estimate of the threat by the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency.
Manningham-Buller, who has headed MI5 since 2002, said the plots “often have linked back to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al-Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”
She warned that radicalization, especially of young people, was one of the biggest problems facing anti-terror investigators.
On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on three subway trains and a bus in London. Three of the four bombers were British-born. This August, police said they had foiled a plot by a British terrorist cell to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners in midair. More than a dozen people, all British, are awaiting trial in the case.
Manningham-Buller said some of the plots the MI5 was tracking could be less threatening than the deadly 2005 ones, but that they still must be investigated. She said the threat from international terrorism “is serious, is growing, and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”
Blair told reporters at his Downing Street office that Manningham-Buller was “absolutely right that it will last a generation.”
“We need to combat the poisonous propaganda of those people that warps and perverts the minds of younger people,” he said.
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said Manningham-Buller had given “a very sobering warning.” He said, however, it was essential that British Muslims are seen as a partner in the fight against terrorism and not some sort of community in need of mass medication. “Holding a community responsible for the actions of a few would be counterproductive,” Bunglawala said.
Bill Durodie, senior lecturer in risk and security at the UK Defense Academy, said high-profile speeches and headline-grabbing numbers risked exaggerating the scale of the threat facing Britain.
“It’s easy to pull out alarmist headlines,” he said. “What we’re seeing here on the whole are lone individuals (and) small groups.”
