Ariana Grande Attack Aftermath: How Vulnerable Is the U.K. to Extremism?
Autor: Polícia On-line | Publicado: 2017-05-23T09:18:00-03:00





image source: Internet

Joseph Hincks

At least 22 people have been killed
and around 59 injured after a suicide bomb attack at Monday night's Ariana
Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, a 21,000 capacity concert venue in the
U.K.'s third most populous city.

Greater Manchester Police chief constable
Ian Hopkins said police believe the attacker was a lone wolf who died at the
scene, although they are trying to establish if the attacker was part of a
network. No organization has yet claimed responsibility or involvement in the
atrocity, but there are good reasons to fear the operations of terror groups,
and self-radicalized, religiously inspired lone wolves in the U.K.



1. Approximately 850 Britons have
joined jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq



In August 2014 British Prime
Minister Theresa May, who was at the time Home Secretary, raised the U.K's
terror threat level to 'severe' meaning that an attack was highly likely. The
severe threat level—one below 'critical', which signifies an imminent
attack—was raised in response to warnings of threats posed by British jihadists
returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq.

British intelligence agencies
estimate that approximately 850 people from the U.K. travelled to Syria and
Iraq to fight for or support jihadist organizations there. As of February this
year about half had returned, the BBC reports. By March, security officials
said they were preparing for the return of hundreds more fighters as ISIS loses
territory. The group's stronghold cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Northern
Syria are both expected to fall this summer.

“It is possible they are going to
return indoctrinated, deeply dangerous and damaged," one government source
told The Guardian.



2. Terrorists have attempted to
attack Manchester before



In November 2015, a New York City
judge jailed Pakistan national Abid Naseer for 40 years after he was convicted
of plotting mass suicide bomb attacks in Manchester in 2009.

Naseer, 29—who was extradited to the
U.S. for trial—was arrested after intelligence services intercepted
communications that suggested he was two days away from carrying out an attack
at Manchester’s Arndale shopping center on a busy Easter weekend, the
Manchester Evening News reports.

The plot involved a car bomb attack
next to the shopping center, with subsequent suicide bombings at separate
locations targeting those fleeing the initial blast. Nine other Pakistani
nationals in the U.K. cities of Liverpool and Manchester were arrested along
with Naseer.



3. British police are constantly
anticipating an terrorist attack



Britain's most senior counter
terrorism officer Mark Rowley said in March this year that the U.K. had
thwarted 13 terror attacks since the murder of Lee Rigby, a solider hacked to
death on the streets of southeast London in 2013. Some of those attacks, Rowley
said, would have been on the scale of those carried out in Paris in 2015 and
Brussels in 2016.

While U.K. intelligence services
have a strong record of anticipating terrorist attacks—garnered in part through
experience dealing with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the 1970s to
1990s—some are always expected to slip the net. Former Metropolitan Police
Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe wrote in August last year that it was a
question "of when not if" an attack in Britain would occur.

This March, Britain Khalid Masood
drove a car into pedestrians near the U.K. Parliament before stabbing a police
officer in an attack that left five people dead, including himself. Last month,
another attack near Parliament was thwarted after armed police swooped on a man
carrying knives.If confirmed as a terrorist attack, Monday night's bombing
would be the deadliest in Britain since four suicide bombers killed 52 people
in coordinated attacks on London's transport system in July 2005.

url: http://time.com/4789816/manchester-ariana-grande-terrorism-islamist-extremism/