MI5 chief's terror warning
Updated on 05 November 2007
Young teenagers are being groomed and recruited by UK terrorists, according to MI5 boss Jonathan Evans.
Terrorists are methodically grooming and recruiting 15- and 16-year-olds in the UK, and a deliberate campaign by al-Quaida is now being driven from an increasing range of countries, from Iraq to the Horn of Africa.
In his first public speech since taking over as director general of MI5 in April, Jonathan Evans today outlined what he described "the most immediate and acute peacetime threat in the 98-year history" of the service.
His warning, that the terrorist problem has not yet reached his peak, came as a 23-year-old man from Ethiopia was jailed on charges linked to the failed 21/7 bomb attacks in London.
By concidence, there was an illustration in the British courts today of what the head of MI5 is stressing about the spread of the al-Qaida franchise.
'This sort of extension of the al-Qaida brand to new parts of the Middle East and beyond poses a further threat... because it provides al-Qaida with access to new centres of support which it can motivate and exploit, including its campaign against the UK.'Jonathan Evans, MI5
Adel Yahya, facing a retrial on charges connected with the 21/7 terror attacks, pleaded guilty to possessing terrorist information, in particular details of explosives and chemicals which he knew those who had planned these suicide bombings would need to use.
He was arrested on returning from Ethiopia, which was also home to another of the 21/7 bombers, Hussein Osman.
Two others, Ramzi Mohammed and Yassin Omar, were Somali.
In his first public speech, Jonathan Evans, picked out Somalia and the wider east African region as places where conspiracies against the UK are now being planned and controlled from.
7/7 exposed the limitations of MI5 at the time. The intelligence and security committee has not published its second review into what happened behind the scenes, but today the director general said they could not, even now, be expected to know everything.
There was another rider, too: the distraction of foreign intelliegnce services operating in the UK. In the wake of the Litvinenko case, Mr Evans said the service was having to divert resources to counter the unrelenting attempts by Russia and China, in particular, to gain access to military and industrial technology through espionage.
