Al Qaeda looking to kids for UK terror campaign

Bloomberg:

Al-Qaeda is recruiting British children to carry out a terrorist attack on home soil, the head of the U.K.'s domestic security service said.

Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, said that the group led by Osama bin Laden is carrying out a ``deliberate campaign'' against Britain to sign up young people.

``As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country,'' Evans told a group of newspaper editors in Manchester, England, according to remarks published on MI5's Web site.

``They are radicalizing, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism,'' Evans said. ``This year, we have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity.''

The agency, which previously focused on the Cold War and terrorism in Northern Ireland, is devoting its resources to the threat from al-Qaeda. On July 7, 2005, suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport system. The men who carried out the attack were born and educated in the U.K. with the youngest bomber aged just 18. After a separate, foiled attack on London on July 21, 2005, men who had resided in the U.K. were also found guilty of terror offenses.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in the U.K. for terrorism-related offences since the September 11 attacks on the U.S. Today, Evans said the number of individuals in Britain identified by MI5 as having links with terrorism had risen to at least 2,000, up from 1,600 last year, adding there could be a further, similar number of suspects again of whom the security services are not aware.

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``Terrorist attacks we have seen against the U.K. are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups,'' Evans said today. ``The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because al-Qaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom. This remains the case today, and there is no sign of it reducing.''

Evans said terror plots against Britain are being directed from a widening range of countries, not just al-Qaeda's ``core leadership'' based in Pakistan. There are now indications, he said, that cells based in Iraq are promoting attacks outside the country and that there are terrorist training centers in Somalia.

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Iraq has certainly faded as abase for terror operations with the demise of al Qaeda's operations there. Pakistan is still the current heart of al Qaeda operations and planning. Zarqawi while alive in Iraq aspired to that objective but his operation is largely in ruins now. The current situation in Pakistan presents both troubles and opportunities for dealing with that threat.

The UK's problems have been compounded by the political correctness mindset of much of the population and tendency toward a lawfare approach to dealing with terrorist that gives the enemy several advantages.

The BBC has more on the UK story.