Britain faces Iraqi-style car-bombings
Five people are in custody after three unsophisticated attempts, and no fatalities.
from the July 2, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"We are dealing with a long-term threat. It is not going to go away in the next few weeks or months," he said. "It's very important that people carry on living their lives as normal, to send a message to the terrorists that they will not be allowed to undermine our British way of life."
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said there were no plans to change US security levels. "At this moment we don't have a specific credible threat against the United States," he said. But some US airports and mass transit systems are tightening security ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, according to the Associated Press.
British security services are monitoring the activities of as many as 2,000 radicals they suspect are capable of terrorist attacks. They cite as motivating factors: anger over the Iraq war, disenchantment with economic prospects, and an active conveyor belt that sends young Britons – many of Pakistani descent – through indoctrination camps in south Asia before returning them home again.
Some say the security services have been coming to grips with the threat, particularly since the 7/7 attack. Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at King's College London says that the degree of desperation in the weekend attacks could be seen as a sign that the authorities were gaining the upper hand over terrorists.
Two weeks ago, seven men were found guilty of involvement in an Al Qaeda-linked plan that, among other things, intended to
use a limousine filled with gas canisters as a car bomb. In the only other successful mass prosecution of Islamic militants
in Britain, a group was convicted in April of planning a series of attacks on a nightclub, shopping center and gas network.
[Editor's note: The original version mischaracterized the prosecution of terrorists in Britain.]
This past weekend's car bomb attacks, for example, did not appear to have been planned or executed with the same sophistication as 7/7, or the other plots that British authorities say they have recently disrupted.
"The fact that they were trying to attack the terminal building is an indication that it has become harder to get on the plane and disrupt the actual traffic," Mr. Neumann says.
But Neumann adds that there were several worries for the security services: the attacks apparently came with no prior intelligence, one of the London cars was spotted by an ambulance crew that noticed smoke coming from a car, and the Scotland attack was apparently unexpected in that it was assumed terrorists were only interested in London targets.
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