Weekly Security Brief - April 7th 2014

This email has been compiled from current, open source data supplied through contacts within Diplomatic Posts, law enforcement agencies and UK intelligence services.

The information herein is to keep you informed of the current security situations within the UK and the rest of the world. Please feel free to forward this document to colleagues.

If you require more specific information on any other prevailing matters, please contact us at info@dilitas.com detailing what you require and we will respond to you.

Regards,

Christopher Cully

Managing Director

The threat to the UK from International Terrorism is SUBSTANTIAL

The threat to Great Britain from Irish Republican Terrorism is MODERATE

Domestic:

A weapons' expert has told the jury in the trial of a Loughborough teenager charged with plotting a terror attack that some recipes in a poisons handbook found on his phone, could work. Dr Paul Rice, employed at Porton Down since 1987, said fireworks and bleach found in Piggin's bedroom could be used to make chlorine gas. Piggin is accused of planning attacks on a mosque and a school and he denies two Terrorism Act charges but has admitted possessing explosives. The Old Bailey jury heard that a copy of the prohibited Mujahedeen Poisons Handbook had been found by police, downloaded on Mr Piggin's mobile phone. The trial continues.

A teenager has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of a terror suspect who escaped surveillance by dressing in a burqa. Anti-terror officers arrested the 17-year-old man on last week on suspicion of conspiring with another to breach measures in a notice issued under the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpim) Act 2011, Scotland Yard said. The arrest is in connection with the escape of Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, who was last seen fleeing a London mosque in women's clothing last November. Mohamed, who was subject to a Tpim, is understood to have received training and fought overseas for al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based cell of al-Qaeda that was behind the attack on a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed at least 67.

The High Court was told last week that a British al-Qaeda suspect, who had links with cleric Abu Hamza, can be sent to America to face terror charges without breaching human rights. Haroon Aswat, faces 11 terror charges and is accused by the US of conspiring with Hamza to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon. An extradition was blocked last year after it was ruled that Aswat, who suffers from mental illness, would be exposed to inhumane treatment which could worsen his illness, and that there were no guarantees over where he would be held. New assurances have been received from the US which would now mean that Aswat would be moved to an appropriate facility should his mental condition worsen, meaning the extradition could go ahead. Aswat denies any terrorist involvement.

The Prime Minister has ordered Whitehall officials to launch an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood – drawing on assessments by MI5 and MI6. A Downing Street source confirmed that the review would examine allegations that the Muslim Brotherhood (logo as inset) was behind the murder of three tourists on a bus in

Egypt in February and that it planned extremist activities from Britain. The source said, "The prime minister has ordered a review to get a better understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood and its values – and look into its alleged links to extremism."

Forthcoming Events, London

Protest Against Biomass Industry and Misuse of Wood – Wednesday 09th April 2014 17.00hrs.

An event is being arranged by the communication agency ‘Shared Experience’ to highlight the destruction to forests caused by the Biomass industry. A short procession from Little Britain – London Wall – Wormwood Street to Bishopsgate is expected to take place.

The Biomass Alternative Awards Ceremony – Wednesday 9th April 2014 19.00hrs

Biomass will be hosting an ‘alternative awards ceremony’ outside Gibson Hall, 13 Bishopsgate, on the above date as representatives from the biomass industry attend a conference at the location. Individuals are currently being asked to vote online through the group’s website for their ‘Biggest Biomess Baddie’, with the winner being announced on the day.

Northern Ireland and Eire:

Five men were arrested on Wednesday in relation to an ongoing investigation into dissident republican paramilitary activity. The men, aged between 30 and 43, were all arrested in the area of Craigavon, County Armagh and taken to Antrim police station for questioning. All five have since been released without charge.

An undercover surveillance operation is believed to have led to the seizure of an improvised mortar bomb in Belfast it was reported on 28 March. Police believe the operation may have foiled an attack. The bomb and a command wire were found in a holdall when police stopped a man [...] in the west of the city. A 22-year-old man has been arrested and is being questioned at the Serious Crime Suite in Antrim. The seizure comes two weeks after the dissident group calling itself the

IRA, fired a mortar at a police Land Rover as it drove along the Falls Road in the city. A different dissident republican organization calling itself Óglaigh na hÉireann is believed to have been responsible for the most recent incident.

Police have said that a bomb found at a County Tyrone golf course had the capability to kill or cause serious injury. Bomb disposal experts made the device safe after it was discovered at Strabane Golf Club on the morning of 31 March. The Strabane area police commander said that the device was potentially deadly. He said, "This device comprised nuts and bolts packed with explosives into a pipe. While police may have been the intended target, golfers, ground staff or members of the community passing by could have been killed or maimed."

Weapons used in the majority of IRA murders of members of the Orange Order came from American sympathisers of the terror group. The Order has demanded an explanation from the US authorities after information was passed to the institution by the PSNI's Historical Enquiries Team. Obtained by the Order's Grand Secretary, files showed the majority of weapons used to murder its members originated in the United States. During the Troubles, 332 members of the Orange Order were killed – the vast majority at the hands of the IRA

A culture existed within the Northern Ireland Office whereby republican paramilitaries were not to be prosecuted, a former senior PSNI officer has claimed. Former Det Chief Supt Norman Baxter – the senior investigating officer in the Omagh bombing - told the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs committee this week that the PSNI was “scapegoated” over the collapse of the prosecution case against John Downey for alleged involvement in the 1982 IRA Hyde Park bombings in which four British soldiers were killed. Mr Baxter, in giving evidence about the Downey case and the controversy over the so called on-the-runs, also claimed “there was a culture within the Northern Ireland Office to ensure that republicans were not prosecuted”. Source A former chief constable of the PSNI has said no phone call was made from Downing Street asking him to release prisoners.

A friend of murdered Real IRA chief Alan Ryan is recovering in hospital after being shot in the back in a gangland style attack. Darren Whelan, 26, was hit twice after a hit man approached him from behind on a public road in Ballyfermot, West Dublin. Gardai in Ballyfermot are investigating if the attack is connected to an ongoing dispute with Republicans in the area. This attack comes just one week after another friend of Ryan’s, Declan ‘Fat Deccy’ Smith, died in hospital after a crèche shooting. Whelan was a close friend of murdered Real IRA chief Alan Ryan, 32, who was shot dead in September 2012.

Irish police believe that a gangland bomber blew himself up after he forgot about the clocks changing for summer time while he was planting a bomb on 30 March. The police are waiting to interview a man who, it is suspected, was severely injured after the bomb he was planting went off early. The suspected bomber was seen fleeing the area in Dublin with "blood dripping down his face" after an explosive device planted under a Volvo SUV went off. The police have suggested that the suspect accidently injured himself in the explosion because he forgot to set his watch forward on the morning of the attack. "This certainly was a high-grade explosive used in this bomb. It wasn't garbage stuff. It would appear the bomber got his timings wrong," a police source told the Mirror.

International:

An Australian vessel searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has detected signals consistent with those from aircraft black boxes. Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield acquired the signal twice, once for more than two hours, Australia said. Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the search, called it the "most promising lead" so far. But he said more information was needed: "We haven't found the aircraft yet and we need further confirmation." The plane, carrying 239 people, was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March when it disappeared. Malaysian officials say they believe it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Three bombs which were detonated near to Cairo University on Wednesday have killed a police brigadier general and injured at least five others. The explosions are said to have occurred near a police post outside a gate to the university. As police and emergency services dealt with the impact of the first two blasts a third explosion was made. A group named Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), have claimed responsibility for the attack stating they were targeting police officers who had been involved in the killings of protestors and that the attack was also in response to the increased detentions recently of female protestors.

A radical Muslim cleric, who had been listed by the UN as a recruiter for the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab group, has been shot dead in Mombasa. It is not yet known who killed Abubakar Shariff Ahmed, who has become the third Muslim cleric to be killed in Mombasa since 2012. Ahmed had always denied recruiting for al- Shabab or encouraging his followers, mostly young Kenyan Muslims, to travel to Somalia to fight.

In Kenya, officials fear that a wave of recent explosions in the country could indicate another large-scale attack is coming. Since the September attack on an upmarket mall that killed 67 people, Somali militant sympathisers have been blamed for an explosion at Nairobi's main airport, a grenade attack on tourists on Kenya's coast, a blast on a public bus in Nairobi, a thwarted car bomb attack in Mombasa last month and three blasts this week in the capital that killed six people. A senior police official who insisted on anonymity said security agencies believe a large attack is imminent.

A radical cleric, Omar Bakri Mohammad, who had been linked to the 7/7 attacks in London, is currently being sought by Lebanese authorities. Mohammed, who is barred from the UK, is wanted in relation to sectarian violence which has cost over thirty lives. He denies any connection to the current unrest in Lebanon, claiming he earns his living by selling CD’s of his Islamic sermons. However, after soldiers attended Mohammad’s property earlier this week after a security operation in Tripoli, it appeared that he had heard he was to be arrested and left. Mohammed had claimed asylum in the UK after being forced out of Saudi Arabia, is said to have founded the radical al-Muhajiroun group in Tottenham, and had led a protest at the US embassy in London in 2004 which had involved an American flag being burnt.

A suicide bombing, believed to have been carried out by Boko Haram, killed approximately twenty people on Tuesday in Nigeria. It is understood militants, six of whom died in the attack, blew up a vehicle near a checkpoint in Borno state. Three vehicles laden with explosives had been discovered by soldiers at the checkpoint as militants had tried to drive these into a petrol station, however a fourth vehicle exploded. Boko Haram was launched in 2009, with the aim of setting up an Islamic state.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a top al-Qaeda strategist to death and jailed 15 others for their role in a series of attacks in the kingdom last decade. The judge ordered that the body of Faris al-Zahrani, also known as Abu Jandal al-Azdi, be displayed in public after his death in the most severe form of punishment available under the kingdom's Islamic law. From 2003 to 2006 the militant group attacked residential compounds for expatriates and government facilities, killing dozens of Saudis and foreigners in an effort to end the reign of the al-Saud family and expel

non-Muslims from the country

Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch has mocked tough new counterterrorism measures adopted by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, saying they would not deter the Islamist group's fighters and that they proved the kingdom was in the pay of the United States. In an online statement, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) also said Riyadh's designation of the Muslim Brotherhood - a group whose political wings have contested elections in several countries - as a terrorist organisation proved that secular authorities would never tolerate Islamist groups.

The West is facing a more powerful terrorism threat now, than in the lead-up to 9/11 because of the Middle East's current political and economic uncertainty; according to one of Australia's top security analysts. Research director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy Dr Anthony Bubalo says the region's many conflicts have galvanised international extremism and provided an environment in which "a whole new generation of jihadists [is] being re-tooled and re-trained". He said, "The people who launched 9/11 didn't just suddenly appear on the 10th of September. They were the result of conditions and circumstances that had been developing in the Middle East

over a decade and a half."

In a news conference in The Hague last week, President Obama said that he was more concerned about a nuclear explosion in Manhattan than what Russia is doing territorially to its neighbors. In his response to a question about Russia, the president said, "Russia's actions are a problem. They don't pose the number one national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan..." President Obama made the statement during a joint news conference with Dutch

Prime Minister at the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands.

An Iraq War veteran being treated for mental illness was the gunman who opened fire at Fort Hood, killing three people and wounding 16 others before committing suicide, in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were slain in 2009, authorities said. The gunman, identified as Ivan Lopez, served in Iraq for four months in 2011 and had been undergoing an assessment before the attack to determine if he had post-traumatic stress disorder. The attack immediately revived memories of the 2009 shooting rampage on Fort Hood, the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in US history. Thirteen people were killed

and more than 30 were wounded.

[Prior to the above shooting incident, it was reported that] The FBI is on the lookout for a recent Army recruit who it believes was planning a ‘Fort Hood-inspired jihad against US soldiers'. According to an alert sent out by the FBI's Kansas City Division late last week, they are searching for a man identified as Booker who had told friends of his ‘intention to commit jihad.’ Booker, also known as Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, was recruited by the US Army in Kansas City, Mo., in February 2014 and was scheduled to report for basic training on April 7. He was discharged last week after law enforcement authorities learned of his alleged plan – according to Fox News.

A 19-year-old Pennsylvania man has been charged with attempted murder after he sent a scratch-and-sniff card with traces of the deadly poison ricin. The man sent ricin to his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend. Investigators say he told a co-worker he rubbed ground castor beans inside the card, claiming that it would kill anyone who came in contact with it. The co-worker later informed police who caught the letter before it reached the man's mailbox.

A still-secret US Senate report into the use of “enhanced interrogations” in the wake of 9/11 will find that torture was not necessary or effective, it has been claimed. Water-boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a new senate report into the use of torture by the CIA in the years after the September 11 attacks is expected to claim. If confirmed, the finding in the 6,200-page senate report will directly challenge assertion by former members of the George W. Bush administration that the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques were an essential tool in prosecuting the war on terror.

The Transportation Security Administration has recommended last week that airports post armed law enforcement officers at security checkpoints and ticket counters during peak hours. The recommendation was one of 14, determined after a nationwide review of security at airports prompted by a shooting at Los Angeles International Airport last Autumn.

A noticeable trend has been spotted in international terrorism in recent years - terrorists began heading in a westward direction during and after the Arab Spring. One pillar of international terrorism began in Iraq and it has been moving toward Syria where a bloody civil war is taking place. The other pillar of international terrorism started from Yemen and has been heading toward Somalia, Sudan and then North Africa. These two patterns have one thing in common - that the central axis of international terrorism is going westward.

Opposition activists again accused President al-Assad's forces of using poison gas in Syria's civil war this week, showing footage of an apparently unconscious man lying on a bed and being treated by medics. The alleged attack in a suburb of Damascus comes a week after the Syrian government sent a letter to the United Nations claiming it had evidence that rebel groups were planning a toxic gas attack in the same area.

The US Secretary of State has said that Washington was looking to increase its security assistance to Algeria to help it tackle militancy in the vast Sahel region to its south, home to one of the world's most active branches of al-Qaeda. Algeria, a major gas supplier to Europe, is already a key partner in Washington's campaign against Islamist fighters who have tried to spread across the Maghreb after the French military drove them out of Mali last year.

Former US envoy to Pakistan Cameron Munter has dismissed the notion that Pakistan knew about Osama bin Laden hiding within their borders and said that there is no evidence to back this claim. Munter [...] noted there is much speculation that the Pakistani government was aware that Osama bin Laden was hiding within their borders but dismissed this notion as blatantly false. He said, “It’s not accurate that the Pakistanis knew that Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad. We have not found any evidence. Our guys took tons and tons of evidence. It would have leaked,

guaranteed.”

Iran's decision to appoint a member of the group behind the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran as its ambassador to the United Nations has angered US lawmakers, prompting one US Senator to propose a law that would prevent Hamid Abutalebi, now a veteran diplomat, from entering the USA. The administration of the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, has submitted a US visa application for Mr Abutalebi, who [...] was at one time a member of the group ‘Students Following the Imam's Line’, which was behind the occupation of the US embassy in November

1979 and the holding hostage of 52 Americans for 444 days.

Andrew Weber, assistant secretary of defence for nuclear, chemical and biological defence programs, said there are numerous emerging biological threats worldwide due to the easy accessibility of materials involved in the production of biological weapons during a lecture last week. “Today, there is a lack of need for infrastructure that only a nation state would have,” he said. “[Ingredients are] available at Home Depot.” With regard to terrorist groups, Weber said he was concerned that al-Qaeda has asked for brothers with degrees in microbiology or chemistry to develop weapons of mass destruction. He also said he was concerned about the location the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo produced their biological weapons used in the Tokyo Metro attack in 1995, where cult members punctured packets of the neurotoxin sarin on the Tokyo subway

system, leading to hundreds of injuries and lasting medical conditions.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has detained 25 Ukrainians, accusing them of planning terrorist attacks at about the time of last month's Crimean referendum. The FSB says they are members of ultra-nationalist movements and were preparing attacks inside Russia. Ukraine's Security Service says Russian media reports that it had ordered any such attacks were "nonsense".

Pro-Russian protesters have stormed government buildings in three eastern Ukrainian cities. In Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv they clashed with police, hung Russian flags from the buildings and called for a referendum on independence. Ukraine's acting president called an emergency security meeting in response. The unrest comes amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine over the removal of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Cyber News:

According to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, employees have so much difficulty remembering their passwords that they often wind up engaging in potentially risky practices while navigating password-protected systems simply because they are just trying to finish their work. The report found that employees are generally aware that these practices, including reusing the same password or writing down passwords, are less than ideal in terms of security. The report states that until IT departments are able to introduce user-friendly security, such practices are likely to continue. The report suggested that companies should introduce single sign-on technology that would enable employees to use one password for multiple systems, as employees are more willing to memorise a more complicated and secure password when they only have one such password to remember.

While hackers tried to get rich by stealing millions of credit cards from Target, other cybercriminals have quietly tried another method to make a quick buck: Asking companies to pay them to go away. In recent weeks, two companies have publicly described their experiences with what has become a popular hacker tactic: cyber extortion. Cybercriminals have threatened to disclose sensitive data or cripple websites unless their victims pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in ransom.

The Pentagon is significantly growing the ranks of its cyber warfare unit in an effort to deter and defend against foreign attacks on crucial US networks, the US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said. In his first major speech on cyber policy, Hagel sought to project strength but also to tame perceptions of the United States as an aggressor in computer warfare, stressing that the government “does not seek to militarize cyberspace.” Hagel said that the fighting force at US Cyber Command will number more than 6,000 people by 2016, making it one of the largest such forces in the world.

Japan held a government-wide cyber security drill last week in a bid to improve coordination among public agencies and major businesses, as Tokyo prepares to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. The mock cyber-attack for the first time brought together 21 government departments and firms in 10 business sectors, including utilities, banking and aviation. "Cyber-attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated, highly developed and internationalized," Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary told participants taking part in the drill.




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Thanks To Christopher Cully and his team at Dilitas for allowing us to share this on the forum, all credit goes to Dilitas for the Intel