British Security Services Were Warned Five Times About Salman Abedi Talking Up Suicide Bombing

Maybe it's time we focused less on "Muslims need to report their misbehaving members" and more on "Security services need to actually do something when citizens report likely terrorists."

I don't know that all of the people reporting Abedi were Muslim, but given that they were "friends" and I can't see Abedi trying too hard to integrate into broader British society, I imagine at least some were.

The Manchester suicide bomber was repeatedly flagged to the authorities over his extremist views, but was not stopped by officers, it emerged Wednesday night.

Counter Terrorism agencies were facing questions after it emerged Salman Abedi told friends that "being a suicide bomber was okay", prompting them to call the Government's anti-terrorism hotline.

Sources suggest that authorities were informed of the danger posed by Abedi on at least five separate occasions in the five years prior to the attack on Monday night.

...

Two friends of Abedi also became so worried they separately telephoned the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago and again last year.

“They had been worried that ‘he was supporting terrorism’ and had expressed the view that ‘being a suicide bomber was ok’,” a source told the BBC.

Akram Ramadan, 49, part of the close-knit Libyan community in south Manchester, said Abedi had been banned from Didsbury Mosque after he had confronted the Imam who was delivering an anti-extremist sermon.

...

Mr Ramadan said he understood that Abedi had been placed on a "watch list" because the mosque reported him to the authorities for his extremist views.

A well-placed source at Didsbury Mosque confirmed it had contacted the Home Office's Prevent anti-radicalisation programme as a result.

A US official also briefed that members of Abedi's own family had contacted British police saying that he was "dangerous", but again the information does not appear to have been acted upon.

I'm not sure all of these claims are true -- it could be pro-Islamist agitators making claims to exonerate the Libyan community in Manchester.

But I gotta tell you, based on the past record, with so many "Known Wolves" being at perfect liberty to murder and maim, and the FBI seemingly intentionally permitting the Garland shooter to begin his attempt to assassinate people for putting on Free Speech demonstration, I am seriously beginning to wonder if our security services are actually in the business of protecting us rather than "community feelings."

And meanwhile, the feds allowed known MS-13 members to enter the United States as "unaccompanied minor" border crossers, and they're now lost in the country.

A number of Central American youths who were positively identified by border agents as MS-13 and Sureno 18 gang members were allowed to enter the country in July 2014 under Obama administration border surge policies, according to documents released today by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). Johnson is seeking information from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the status of these cases and, most importantly, whether they were released from the HHS facilities to communities in the United States. The youths were initially held by the Border Patrol in Nogales, Ariz., and were later transferred to HHS-run facilities in Virginia, Washington, Texas, New York, and Oklahoma.

The gang members were identified on July 5, 2014, after staff members at the Border Patrol facility saw MS-13 graffiti in the bathrooms. Officers documented 16 juveniles who admitted to gang membership...

Despite the positive identification as gang members, the youths were transferred to low-security facilities around the country....

A week later, on July 11, Border Patrol agents apprehended two more UACs who were heard in their cells boasting about their gang affiliation and crimes to each other...

These two were separated from the general population in the Border Patrol holding facility until "being placed". There is no further information available about the disposition of their cases, whether they were eventually placed in an HHS contract facility somewhere, whether they were released, whether they have completed their deportation proceedings, or what has happened to them.

One thing to keep in mind about security services leaving known wolves to kill:

I spoke to a source with close knowledge of terrorist surveillance practices, and she told me that even serious terrorist threats -- serious, like they know this guy is definitely a terrorist -- are followed something like three 8-hour shifts a week.

When I heard this, I tried to clarify: "No, I don't mean the low-level threats, I mean the high level threats."

"I mean the high level threats too," she said. "The low-level threats get much less surveillance."

The problem, which surprised me, is just that there are so many high-level terrorist threats that there just aren't enough counter-terrorism surveillance personnel to follow them any more than a fraction of the time.

So part of the problem is simple: We just have too many high-level terrorism threats living in America. (And Britain, of course.) They overwhelm security services with their sheer numbers.

Maybe it's time to focus on that, the real problem, rather than lying to the public that we can "manage" terrorist threats in-country.

We can't. I was flat-out told how thinly spread surveillance personnel are and how they have to do triage surveillance even on the highest level threats.

Like, just an idea, maybe we could not admit known MS-13 gang members into our country when they illegally cross the border.

posted by Ace at 02:11 PM

| Access Comments