A Middle East expert has warned terrorists are planning a Paris-style attack on the United Kingdom as the next Islamic State target, to be carried out by British-born jihadis returning from Syria.
A senior European counter terrorism official told CNN‘s Paul Cruickshank of “specific intelligence” obtained by European security agencies suggesting that the UK is the next Islamic State target for a terror attack.
BREAKING: Euro CT official tells @CruickshankPaul: Intel obtained by Euro security agencies indicates ISIS aiming to attack UK
— CNN NationalSecurity (@NatSecCNN) December 4, 2015
CNN‘s terrorism analyst said the intelligence suggests that “British ISIS operatives in Syria and Iraq have been tasked to return to the UK to launch an attack,” a fear which he says has been “compounded” by this weeks Parliamentary vote authorising British air strikes against ISIS in Syria.
Intel suggests British ISIS fighters have been tasked by senior ISIS operatives to return home and carry out an attack.
— CNN NationalSecurity (@NatSecCNN) December 4, 2015
The threat is reportedly being treated “very, very seriously indeed” according to the Daily Mirror. Mr. Cruickshank added that there is “real concern now about the threat to the United Kingdom… Concern in Europe, particularly in the UK now, that what we saw in Paris, an attack like that, could play out again, perhaps in the United Kingdom, in the weeks ahead.”
Only last month the Hammersmith born and raised British jihadi, Aine Davis, was arrested in Turkey with what were said to be specific plans for a terror attack in Europe issued by ISIS commanders. The convicted criminal — an associate of Jihadi John likely radicalised while serving a two-year sentence in a young offenders institution — had been working as an ISIS prison guard holding foreign hostages in Syria.
Sussex University’s Suraj Lakhani, a criminology and sociology expert who specialises in radicalisation and violent extremism, warns that young British Muslims are in fact radicalised by British extremists.
“There’s always going to be a fear and a risk that this radicalisation we are seeing is happening within the UK.
“We know that 750 to 1,000 British Muslims have gone to fight with ISIS and that some of them have come back.
“The reality is that there is a high terror alert and there is a threat it’s [Paris Attacks] something that could happen in the UK.”
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