Is the UK actually any safer 20 years on from 7/7?

There are extraordinary secret surveillance photographs – now largely forgotten – that in their very own grainy and mysterious approach, inform the story of missed alternatives that possibly, simply possibly, might have stopped the horrific suicide assaults that came about in London 20 years in the past.

They are photographs of the ringleader of the 7/7 bombings – first caught on digicam at an al-Qaeda-associated coaching camp within the Lake District in 2001.

Two extra photographs from 2004 present him – title and intentions then unknown – assembly a unique cell of bomb plotters outdoors London and being adopted by an MI5 staff as he made his approach again to Leeds.

Nobody joined all these dots, and labored out the person was Mohammad Sidique Khan till he and the three different members of his gang had killed 52 individuals with their 4 home made bombs.

Despite being seen assembly different males of actual concern, he was by no means made a precedence for investigation.

For months I’ve been asking lots of the high individuals – from prime ministers by to former extremists – to mirror on what they’ve discovered over the 20 years since 7/7. Sir Tony Blair was prime minister on 7/7. Hindsight, he instructed me, was an exquisite factor.

I’ve discovered that the British state has, arguably, probably the most advanced and complex suite of powers and instruments doable to establish, disrupt, prosecute, ban and jail individuals for terrorism offences.

But on the identical time the threats that these powers are getting used to counter immediately are a lot extra advanced than they have been in 2005. And so, 20 years since 7/7, are we any safer now than we have been then?

The 7/7 assaults have been the worst wake-up name possible for the UK’s then outdated counter-terrorism operations.

Until that day in 2005, the UK’s response to terrorism teams was closely influenced by the expertise of combating the IRA, which organised itself alongside navy strains.

Al-Qaeda (AQ) was additionally broadly organised in a navy approach – directing its adherents, together with the 7/7 bombers. But the important thing lesson from 7/7 was that this analogy solely went thus far.

MI5 and the police realised they needed to work nearer collectively to penetrate AQ’s cells.

MI5 groups have been the consultants in secretly gathering intelligence. They might bug, burgle and take heed to “subjects of interest”, to make use of the jargon. But within the run-up to 7/7, the company usually fell in need of sharing that data broadly and shortly sufficient.

Peter Clarke was the Metropolitan Police officer in command of counter-terrorism policing on the time of seven/7.

“I haven’t spoken to anybody who was involved in either counter-terrorism or in the intelligence agencies, who don’t regard it as a failure,” he instructed me. “Of course it was.”

The failure was advanced. Lord Jonathan Evans, the previous head of MI5 – and on the time of seven/7, the deputy head – highlights the strain intelligence groups have been beneath.

“You have to make choices in counter-terrorism investigations. You can’t investigate everything, so the question is are you investigating the most immediately threatening intelligence and making the right priority calls?”

The motive why the long run 7/7 ringleader was put to 1 aspect in 2004 was that there was no substantial intelligence that he was really planning an assault.

The businesses have been specializing in an enormous bomb plot they knew about – Operation Crevice. It was run by the boys Khan was seen assembly. But the brutal reality was that that they had no concept that Khan could possibly be a critical menace as a result of he had been discounted as a precedence for additional investigation.

The 2005 assaults pressured the company and police to assume deeply about how they may finish a doom loop of not investigating somebody as a result of that they had determined they did not know sufficient to assume they have been price investigating.

Some of that was about funding – and there was an enormous injection into counter-terrorism within the years that adopted.

But extra importantly MI5, alongside their companions within the police, started to develop a greater “triage” system to work out which of the hundreds of potential plotters that they had titbits of intelligence about wanted to be prioritised.

That helped get the police nearer, extra shortly, to the purpose the place they may seize proof to land somebody in jail.

Nowhere was this extra profitable than in Operation Overt, which got here a 12 months after 7/7. The Overt plotters had an al-Qaeda recipe for a liquid bomb disguised as a smooth drink – and so they deliberate to explode transatlantic planes.

MI5 captured in extraordinary element the gang’s preparations. They noticed the boys working with instruments to make strange-looking units from home goods together with drink bottles and digicam flash circuits.

Nobody was certain what they have been as much as – till the surveillance revealed the boys recording “martyrdom” movies envisaging their very own deaths mid-air.

This time, the intelligence was being shared in nearly real-time – and the police and prosecutors dived in and arrested and charged the gang earlier than the units have been lastly prepared. The success of Operation Overt exhibits that plots could possibly be disrupted early.

Lord Evans factors to a different important shift in considering. “We had always been predominantly, not exclusively, a London-based organisation,” he says. “But when you recognise that the 7/7 bombers came down from Yorkshire, the threat was national.

“We wanted to have an efficient regional community working very intently with the police within the main cities and that was accelerated and was a really profitable approach of guaranteeing that we have been capable of finding out what was occurring in Manchester or Birmingham or wherever as successfully as we had historically finished in London.”

Then, in 2006, Parliament created a new offence of preparing for acts of terrorism.

This meant the police could swoop in even earlier than in the case of Operation Overt – even before an attacker’s plan was settled. All they needed now was to show a court that an individual had a terrorism mindset and was taking steps towards an outrage – such as researching targets, even if their plan was not finalised.

Max Hill KC led some of the UK’s most complex terrorism trials – and went on to be the Director of Public Prosecutions between 2018 and 2023. He always wanted the strongest case to put to a jury and judge – in order to get the longest possible sentence to protect the public. But in the case of a bomb-maker, that presented a dilemma for the police and MI5.

“How lengthy to let an individual run in the direction of their final goal of deploying units?” he says. “The longer you permit it, the extra critical the jail sentence. But the longer you wait, the larger the chance that there shall be harm or hurt.”

Success after success followed – and cells of plotters were also increasingly infiltrated by spooks finding secret ways to capture chats about plans. Until, that is, the rise of the self-styled Islamic State, which changed all of that once again.

By 2014, thousands of young radicalised men and women had flocked to the territory the group had seized in Syria and Iraq, convinced that the ultra-violent movement was building a utopian state.

Its ideologues told some followers, who could not travel, to plan their own attacks at home and without any direction from commanders.

This was a new and terrifying prospect – and led to a wave of DIY attacks across Europe, including in the UK. So the government turned to other tools to “disrupt” extremists coming home from abroad, by cancelling their passports or stripping citizenship.

The first of a number of attacks in 2017 was committed by a killer who drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing to death a police officer at the gates of Parliament. He acted without warning and seemingly alone, rapidly self-radicalising – moving from thought to violence before his intentions became clear to anyone else.

The rapidity of these attacks – and the regularity of them, disrupted or acted out, had an extraordinary consequence that further complicated the picture. Far-right extremists watched and learned and, seeking a form of “revenge”, became determined to respond in kind.

In 2015, a 25-year-old member of National Action, a now banned extreme right-wing group, carried out a racist attack on a Sikh-heritage dentist in a supermarket. The attacker acted alone. The man who murdered Jo Cox MP a year later, during the Brexit referendum, planned and acted in a similar manner.

This DIY rapid violence did not rely on personal connections to puppet-masters. It was increasingly linked to how extremists found and absorbed extremist material all over the internet.

But that also presented an opportunity. The security service and partners – including the FBI – created teams of “on-line role-players”. They would pose as extremist recruiters in vile chat groups to identify would-be attackers and befriend them. It began to work.

One early success in 2017 saw a young man, angry at the death of his uncle who had been fighting in Syria, ask these spies for a bomb to attack Downing Street. It was a crazy and unrealisable plan. But he genuinely wanted to do it.

The Prevent system – which was set up to identify potential extremists and to stop them supporting terrorism – struggled to win public support amid fears that it was a network to spy on people.

But today it is a vital tool in the state’s armoury – with figures showing that since 2015, some 5,000 young people have been identified as being at risk of extremism and given support, typically through counselling and mentoring, to reject it.

The Manchester Arena terror attack of 2017 – in which 22 people were killed – revealed that MI5 missed a significant chance to focus on the would-be suicide bomber and stop him – but it also revealed how lax security at public gatherings could be exploited.

Figen Murray’s son Martyn Hett was one of the 22 killed.

“You do not ever come to phrases with it,” she tells me. “It’s the brutality, the randomness. These individuals who commit terrorist assaults don’t care who they kill. They do not choose individuals generally.

“Our loved ones are pawns in a big game, because terrorists really want to make a statement against the state.”

Her grief spurred her on to provide you with one of many largest authorized modifications of the final 20 years – a sensible measure to guard individuals if the safety providers fail to notice an incoming menace.

Along with Nick Aldworth, a former senior police officer, they lobbied authorities to create “Martyn’s Law”.

The laws – which is coming into pressure over two years – requires venues to have a safety plan to assist cease acts of terrorism on their premises.

In time, websites with greater than 800 individuals will want additional measures resembling CCTV or safety employees and all venues that may maintain greater than 200 individuals must devise some type of plan to guard the general public and ensure their employees know methods to act on it in an emergency.

At the O2 Arena in London, for instance, employees course of arriving company a bit like they’re going by an airport. There are machines obtainable to scan for weapons too.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicky Evans, the present head of counter-terrorism policing, says her officers are seeing suspects getting youthful, with violent materials on the web enjoying a task in that.

In some circumstances officers are attempting to work out what to do about individuals bent on excessive violence, impressed by acts of terrorism, however who haven’t any clear-cut ideology.

Many of those advanced circumstances are referred by the police to the Prevent counter-radicalisation programme to see if specialist mentors might help.

The case of the Southport assassin Alex Rudakubana – who had been repeatedly flagged to Prevent – is on the coronary heart of a debate about internet-fuelled violence. The forthcoming public inquiry will search for solutions, and should even imply we’ve got to rethink what we imply by the phrase “terrorism”.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s current resolution to ban Palestine Action beneath terrorism legal guidelines – for inflicting huge legal harm – is additional including to a nationwide debate about what threats the counter-terrorism community ought to confront.

Today, many many extra powers are in place – and the UK’s counter-terrorism community, which has a devoted secret headquarters in London, is a well-oiled machine. But the menace is extra various than ever.

Since 2017, the police say there have been 15 home terrorism incidents and so they have disrupted 43 “late-stage” plots.

In the wake of the 2005 assaults, Sir Tony Blair was accused of trampling over civil liberties within the seek for the precise set of powers he thought the safety providers wanted.

I requested whether or not he had obtained the steadiness proper – and the posed again at me shall be within the thoughts of each one among his successors.

“The most fundamental basic liberty is to be protected from violence – and particularly random terrorist violence,” he stated.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, are the policy tools we have in our toolbox adequate to deal with the threat?”

Additional Reporting: Jonathan Brunert

Top picture credit: AFP by way of Getty and Justin Talli

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