U.K. Terrorism Arrests Jump 40% Amid Militants’ Trips to Syria

By Jeremy Hodges  

The number of arrests in U.K. terrorism probes soared by 40 percent this year as police grappled with growing numbers of British citizens traveling to war-torn Syria to work on behalf of Islamic militants.
Police throughout the U.K. arrested 312 people for a range of terrorist-related offenses as of Dec. 16, compared with 222 in 2013, according to data provided by the Metropolitan Police and the U.K. Home Office. In London, police said they detained about 35 percent more people than three years ago amid investigations of British citizens returning from Syria or Iraq.
Islamic State militants have murdered U.S. and U.K. hostages, while videos released online appear to show men with British accents among the fighters. The U.K. terror alert was raised to “severe,” the second-highest level, in August as countries around the world expressed concerns that militants may return to their home countries with plans to attack targets.
“The authorities are coming under pressure,” Raffaello Pantucci, Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, said in
an interview earlier this month. “More people from Syria and Iraq are coming back so you are dealing with a bigger community of people who can be arrested.”
U.K. prosecutors secured their first Syria-related extremist convictions this year with jail terms for those returning from the country ranging between two and 18 years. More than 60 were arrested in London on Syria-related charges alone this year, the MPS said. More than 500 people have traveled to Syria from the U.K. since the country’s civil war began in March 2011.

Increased Threat

“The authorities have a very difficult job to do,” Sajjan Gohel, director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation and a lecturer at the London School of Economics, said in a phone interview. “They will not arrest someone unless they feel there is a reason. Yes the numbers have increased, but so has the threat.”
Still, human rights groups have criticized police, saying that high-profile investigations have led to few serious prosecutions. Two Syria-related convictions included a woman trying to send money to her jihadist husband and two men who went to the country with a copy of “Koran for Dummies.”
“Britain’s wide, sweeping terror laws are sucking in all and sundry, yet most are being quietly released without charge or never prosecuted,” Amandla Thomas-Johnson of the human rights group CAGE, said in a statement. “Such an emphasis on returning fighters is therefore not based on empirical evidence and can only be seen as a pretext for the state to grab yet more power and violate fundamental British values.”

39 Families

London police have said they have been contacted by 39 families concerned that a family member may be planning to travel to fight in Syria in 2014. Law enforcement officials called on religious leaders, members of the public and family to help identify home-grown terrorists to prevent the U.K. from becoming an export hub for jihadist violence earlier this year.
“Public safety is our number one priority and we will always focus our disruption activity against those posing the greatest and most imminent threat, Mark Rowley, London police’s assistant commissioner for specialist operations, said in a statement. ‘‘Sometimes this means intervening very early -- essential to prevent attacks, but presenting enormous challenges in securing sufficient evidence to charge.’’
The focus on Syria comes as resources are also being put into tracking the possibility of so-called lone-wolf attacks. Terrorist incidents around the globe in recent years have been carried out by one person, or a small group, that have few ties to jihadist networks.

Soldier Murder

In London last year, two men were convicted of killing a soldier in an attack gripped a nation as televised images of the bloodshed were transmitted around the world. In Sydney’s central business district earlier this month, a self-proclaimed Islamic cleric from Iran held 17 people hostage in a cafe before a shootout with police resulted in the death of the cleric and two of the hostages.
Additional incidents in France, New York and Canada have galvanized global law enforcement agencies’ determination to counter the domestic threat.
There has been a significant increase in lone-wolf attacks since 2008, according to a study by the Terrorism Research Initiative, a group of academics.
Single-actor crimes constituted 12 percent of terrorist plots in Europe from 2001 through 2007. The proportion increased to 38 percent from 2008 through 2013, according to the report called ‘‘The Modus Operandi of Jihadi Terrorists in Europe,” which examined 122 terrorist plots on the continent between 1994 and 2013.

Diverse Methods

“Jihadi terrorism in Europe is becoming more discriminate in its targeting while attack methods are becoming more diverse,” Petter Nesser and Anne Stenersen, of the University of Oslo, said in the report.
The unpredictably of the lone attacker terrifying citizens poses serious problems for security agencies.
“Plots are of varied sophistication, from individuals planning to carry out spontaneous yet deadly attacks to more complex conspiracies, almost all seemingly are either directed by or inspired by terrorism overseas,” Rowley said.