Home-grown terrorist recruitment rising, says British spy chief

The Brown government unveils plans to curb recruitment in mosques, jails.

from the November 8, 2007 edition

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But Mr. Neumann says that money for these initiatives has been slow to materialize. "Some of this money was approved in 2005, and they are still planning the projects and none of it has trickled down," he says. "Teaching foreign imams is important; it's also important to do work in prisons, because there are now a lot of jihadists there and radicalization is becoming a problem. They don't need lots of money, just a little would do, but there isn't really a comprehensive strategy."

Indeed, some analysts say that the center of British Islamic fundamentalism has already moved away from mosques and into gyms, social clubs and, above all, the Internet.

On Tuesday, the EU's top justice official, Franco Frattini, echoed Evans's comments, and called for European governments to make recruitment or "public provocation" to commit violent attacks punishable offenses, to make it illegal to post terrorist propaganda and bombmaking instructions on websites, and to collect and store data (for 13 years) about airline passengers flying into the 27-nation union.

In Britain, some details of Brown's counterterrorism policies were outlined Tuesday in the annual Queen's Speech, including giving police the ability to question suspects after they are charged and barring convicted terrorists from traveling overseas. Separately, the government indicated that it will press ahead with legislation that will give police longer to question suspects before charging them. At present, the limit is 28 days. Brown has suggested 56 days, but the measure could face strong opposition in parliament.

Civil liberty groups say it will sacrifice the very freedoms that terrorists are taking aim at; and terrorism experts warn that it will impair relations with the Muslim community, perhaps jeopardizing the flow of information so vital to antiterrorism work.

Mr. Ayers says that given the high number of potential suspects, the security services cannot possibly keep tabs on all of them. It will thus be more dependent than ever on local information. "You need something that will allow you to focus attention on smaller groups of high-risk people. The hope is that some of those initial indicators would come out of the community."

In their defense, the security services and police argue that they often have to intervene early in the incubation of a plot to ensure public safety: in these cases, police forgo months of evidence collection that they might have conducted before arrests.

"It is possible to envisage circumstances in which the 28-day limit might prove inadequate given the increasing complexity and scale of the current terrorist challenge," says Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

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