Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Intelligence in spotlight over London bombs (Reuters)

Stiamo freschi...
Am.
Friday July 8, 12:25 AM
Intelligence in spotlight over London bombs
 LONDON (Reuters) - The bombers who spread death and chaos across 
London's transport network slipped under the radar of police and 
intelligence services who said there was no advance warning of the 
capital's worst militant attack.
 Security analysts said it was far too early to apportion blame to the 
intelligence community over an operation that some suspected was the 
work of a small, autonomous group of local militants inspired by al 
Qaeda.
 But the Guardian newspaper reported that intelligence chiefs had 
reduced the threat level from al Qaeda from "severe - general" to 
"substantial" as recently as last month.
 Anthony Glees, an intelligence specialist at Brunel University, said 
questions would be asked as to why that decision was taken shortly 
before the country was due to host a Group of Eight summit of the 
world's most powerful leaders.
 "They did downgrade the threat even though it was objectively quite 
clearly a time of heightened political interest. I think questions will 
be asked about it," he said.
 A Downing Street spokeswoman refused to confirm or deny the report, 
saying: "The government doesn't comment on threat levels."
 At least 37 people were killed as explosions ripped apart three 
underground trains and a bus on Thursday morning, just as G8 leaders 
were getting down to summit business in Scotland.
 A senior police official told reporters: "(The) information I have is 
there was no intelligence in our possession of these attacks ... We were 
given no warning by any organisation that this was going to happen."
 INTELLIGENCE REFORM
 The country has reformed its security structures to wage the war on 
terrorism, creating a new body -- the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre -- 
to bring together the domestic, foreign and military intelligence 
services, the GCHQ communications interception centre and the police. 
Spain and Australia are among countries that have adopted similar models.
 In common with other European nations, officials have been expressing 
increasing concern about the threat from home-grown militants, acting 
autonomously and without traceable links to known suspects.
 Home Office Minister Hazel Blears told a conference earlier this year 
that the previous focus on a threat from foreign nationals had given way 
to awareness of a "growing engagement in terrorism from British citizens 
as well".
 Small cells that do not rely on financial or technical support or 
orders from outside are harder to intercept using the kinds of measures 
that authorities have emphasised since the September 11 attacks, such as 
closer scrutiny of money transfers and tighter immigration and border 
controls.
 "If you have people who are very prudent about contact, who communicate 
little, who avoid travelling to Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, who 
avoid frequenting mosques which are too closely watched, those kind of 
people have every chance of slipping through the net," said security 
analyst Claude Moniquet.
 He said the type of operation carried out in London required local 
knowledge: "This is not something that could be done by someone who 
arrived from abroad a month ago. It's clearly an attack prepared quite 
some time ago by people on the spot."
 It was the third recent occasion that European intelligence services 
had been caught by surprise, following last year's Madrid bombings and 
the murder of a Dutch film-maker by a suspected Islamic radical last 
November.
 Although most of the Madrid suspects were foreign nationals, especially 
from Morocco, they were living in Spain and apparently did not rely 
significantly on logistical support, cash or instructions from abroad.
 In the Netherlands, the accused killer of film-maker Theo van Gogh was 
linked to a radical Islamist group, again of mainly Moroccan descent. 
But the cell appeared to operate as a self-contained unit, not part of a 
Europe-wide militant network.
 "To combat the groups you either need to turn a member, which is time 
consuming and difficult, or penetrate the group," said Eric Denece, head 
of the French Intelligence Research Centre.
 "The people we're confronting have time on their side. They will try 20 
times, 30 times, in 99 percent of the cases we'll succeed in preventing 
their operations. But there will always be one that slips through the 
net."

 Stiamo freschi...
Cose molto simili a quelle che si lessero per gli U.S.A. dopo l'11
settembre... ci sarà da riflettere?

 wrote:

Be'. C'e' una differenza sostanziale. Quella un operazione pianificata 
nei minimi dettagli da una direzione centrale.
Questa, realizzata probabilmente da militanti di quartiere.
Anche la risposta cambia. 
Am.

"amalric" <ama...@TOGLIMIaliceposta.it> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:8Fqze.47029$h5.19...@news3.tin.it...

io facevo un discorso un po' estremo derivato dal fatto che praticamente
questi attentati fanno comodo soprattutto a Bush e Blair più che alla
"causa"...

 "causa"...
Sinceramente non mi sembra una grande trovata, ne' che sia il tempo di 
illudersi.
Comunque mi sono sbagliato anch'io. Gli esecutori sembrerebbero 
residenti, ma il Semtex, esplosivo militare, non e' cosa che si trovi al 
supermercato.
Am.