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Charlie Hebdo attack


Defence and security blog



Charlie Hebdo, Europe, Britain, and Terrorism: dangers ahead









• More resources needed for security and intelligence agencies, not new laws

• Alienation among root causes of violent terrorism














Steve Bell on the Charlie Hebdo attack video Photograph: Copyright Steve Bell 2015/All Ri/Steve Bell




Richard Norton-Taylor


Monday 12 January 2015 11.37 EST







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"The rush to legislation after an atrocity is often a mistake", warned Eliza Manningham-Buller in a BBC Reith lecture in 2011 after she had retired as head of MI5.
"There are those, the sceptical observers I wish the readers of intelligence to be, who believe that governments hype threats for their own purposes to ensure legislation proceeds through parliament", she wrote in Securing Freedom, a year later.
Ministers, MPs, MI5, MI6, and GCHQ officials would do well to heed her wise words in the aftermath of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, a kosher supermarket, and police officers, in Paris last week.
Andrew Parker, MI5's current chief, in a pre-planned speech on Thursday called for new powers to fight extreme violence perpetrated in the name of Islam. "If parts of the radar go dark and terrorists are confident that they are beyond the reach of MI5 and GCHQ, acting with proper legal warrant, then our ability to keep the country safe is also reduced", he said.
"My sharpest concern as director-general of MI5 is the growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it", Parker added.
David Cameron on Monday said MI5 and GCHQ needed extra powers to intercept and read communications. (One reason why MI5 and GCHQ want new powers to intercept social media and internet data is the government's refusal to allow the product of intercepted phone conversations in court.)
Yet Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers who killed 12 people, were known to the French security services. Saïd was known to have visited Yemen. Chérif had been convicted of terrorism offences. They were both on UK and US "no-fly" lists.
Hayat Boumeddiene, wife of Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered a police officer and four people in a kosher supermarket, and who is reported to have escaped to Syria, had 500 phone conversations last year with Izzana Hamyd, wife of Chérif Kouachi. She was known to the French intelligence services who stopped watching her Parisian cell after it was considered "low risk".
In Britain, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013 were known to MI5. So, too, were Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, the suicide bombers who attacked the London underground in July 2005.
MI5 argued that they did not have enough resources to follow individuals they considered less dangerous than others. The security and intelligence agencies, and the police, probably do need more resources – both money and personnel.
The agencies do not so much need more powers as they need more resources and footsoldiers to conduct more old-fashioned police and intelligence work to monitor the activities of the 60 or so Britons who have returned to the UK from Syria and seem to be regarded as posing a serious potential threat. 
There is never such a thing as absolute security. MI5 and GCHQ will have to use their judgment to decide priorities.
What would help is attacks on a root cause of extremist Islamist terror attacks – namely, rootlessness and alienation. A number of foreign heads of government went to Paris to show support for François Holland.
Were they more concerned about the vulnerability of their own states than expressing genuine sympathy with the French people and defending the principle of free speech?
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas were among the leaders in Paris. They have special responsibilities – as does the US.



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Charlie Hebdo attack




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