MI5 faces deadly dilemma over terror suspects it has under surveillance

[SuperStylin]

MI5 faces deadly dilemma over terror suspects it has under surveillance

Security services damned if they do and damned if they don't when gauging levels of surveillance

PUBLISHED : Friday, 27 February, 2015, 10:43pm
UPDATED : Friday, 27 February, 2015, 10:43pm

The Guardian

Two police officers walk outside a flat in London on Thursday reported to be the former home of Mohammed Emwazi, also known as 'Jihadi John'.Photo: Reuters

Britain's security services are in a no-win situation. Monitor a suspected terrorist and, as in the case of Mohammed Emwazi, MI5 ends up accused of harassment. Fail to monitor him, also in the case of Emwazi, and MI5 is blamed for letting him escape abroad to commit murder.

MI5, like the FBI, has known since at least September Emwazi is "Jihadi John", the Islamic State militant with the distinctive British accent who has appeared in the group's gruesome videos, beheading several hostages.

The 26-year-old militant used the videos to threaten the West, admonish its Arab allies and taunt President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron before petrified captives in orange jump suits.

Emwazi's identification was widely reported around the world on Thursday, initially by the Washington Post, then the BBC - but still has not been publicly confirmed by MI5 or the FBI.

To some extent, the reticence is legal: there is a police investigation in both countries into the beheadings of American and British hostages, allegedly by Emwazi.

Another reason is operational: a fear that releasing the name might provoke a negative reaction from Emwazi or one of his colleagues, given they are still holding western hostages. Another is concern about the risk to Emwazi's family in the UK, and fears of violence against them.

No explanation has yet been offered about how authorities identified him. But it would not have been hard for the British agencies, in the relatively small pool of jihadi sympathisers in London, to establish the identity of the IS member with the London accent. In September, US and British sources in Washington hinted that voice recognition had helped track him down.

The US national security council, like its British counterparts, refused to publicly confirm that Emwazi was "Jihadi John", saying it would not comment on ongoing investigations.

The silence left a vacuum for the prisoners' group Cage to fill, accusing MI5 of putting pressure on an innocent man, harassing him to become an informer and, eventually, radicalising him.

But the counter-narrative is that Emwazi was mixing in radical Islamist circles early on, behaviour that attracted the attention of MI5. A leading researcher into counterterrorism and intelligence, Shashank Joshi, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, has no issue with MI5 recruiting agents as long as it does so within the law.

"What I object to is Cage's simplistic narrative of an innocent man radicalised by the British state. There is evidence to show he was associated with a jihadi network early on and the security services had good reason to watch him."

Haras Rafiq, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, which was founded by former militants to counter the recruiting efforts of extremists, said it had evidence Emwazi was involved with a network of people whose movements were restricted because of links to the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia.

"MI5 does not intervene unless they have evidence," he said.

At least 600 British nationals are believed to have gone to Syria, according to figures released by British defence officials. But British lawmaker Khalid Mahmood, who sits on an all-party committee on terrorism, has said the figure could be as high as 2,000.

Rafiq said the strategy devised for dealing with extremism was supposed to have two prongs. While going after suspects, attempts were to be made to work with Muslim communities to dissuade those sympathetic to extremist ideology from acting. But he said the second part had been neglected recently.

"We stopped doing the basics, the real prevention work," he said. The government "just looks at this problem through the eyes of legislation and criminality".

Among the questions facing the security services is Emwazi's claim that a British counter-terrorist official tried to strangle him in 2010. He made the claim in emails sent to Cage.

The question of how he evaded the authorities, ending up in Syria in 2012, is also being raised.

It can take 50 people to maintain 24-hour surveillance so decisions have to be made on who requires that level of surveillance.

But when somebody like Emwazi slips through the net and becomes a notorious terrorist, it is not necessarily a defence that will persuade the public.

Additional reporting by Tribune News Service