Weekly Security Brief - April 28th

by **Sabre** 28/4/2014, 14:26

Dilitas Weekly Security Brief This email has been compiled from current, open source data supplied through contacts within Diplomatic Posts, law enfo

Weekly Security Brief - April 28th Pic%20blurred%20city%20workers

[ltr]Dilitas Weekly Security Brief
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.[/ltr]

[ltr]Regards,
Christopher Cully
Managing Director[/ltr]

[ltr]The threat to the UK from International Terrorism is SUBSTANTIAL
The threat to Great Britain from Irish Republican Terrorism is MODERATE[/ltr]

[ltr]Domestic:[/ltr]

[ltr]A man has been arrested in west London on suspicion of financing and encouraging terrorism. The 36 year old was arrested yesterday following raids at six addresses in Hounslow, Walthamstow, Brentford and Greenford. It is understood raids are continuing at residential addresses in Ealing and a business address in Fulham. No further details have yet been released.[/ltr]

[ltr]Debbie Vincent was jailed last week for six years for her part in a blackmail plot against customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). Members of the animal rights group SHAC leaked names of companies linked to HLS, accused members of staff of being paedophiles and sent incendiary devices to individuals. Vincent is said to have worked alongside SHAC organisers, Greg and Natasha Avery, and became a more prominent member of the group after the Averys were imprisoned in 2009.[/ltr]

[ltr]A UK citizen has been charged and is awaiting extradition to the United States for his part in an alleged operation to smuggle chemical laboratory equipment into Syria for possible use by the Assad regime. A federal indictment unsealed in the US this week revealed details of the alleged conspiracy to export lab equipment and items designed to detect chemical warfare agents.[/ltr]

[ltr]A nationwide campaign was launched last Thursday urging people, particularly women, to report family members and friends travelling to Syria in order to fight. Counter terrorism police, those working to prevent extremism, and community groups are working together to highlight the dangers and risks associated with such travel. The campaign highlights what people should do if they suspect anyone they may know is intending to travel to the country.
Around 400 Britons are believed to have travelled to Syria over the last two years, with an estimated twenty having died.[/ltr]

[ltr]If an Islamic terrorist is apprehended in Detroit or blows himself up in Stockholm, it doesn’t usually take long to trace their career progression back to Britain. The CIA despairingly refers to “Londonistan”, but the phrase doesn’t quite do justice to Britain’s ability to incubate terrorism all over the country. For various reasons – chiefly our being quicker to accept asylum-seekers than expel villains – Britain has ended up as a kind of finishing school for jihadis[/ltr]

[ltr]A satellite TV station based in suburban England is being investigated after allegations it broadcast a Muslim cleric’s "hate sermons" and "vile rants" to audiences across the Middle East, Al Arabiya has reported. The UK’s independent television regulator says it has launched an investigation into Fadak TV, which was founded by Sheikh Yasser al-Habib. The Shia cleric has been accused of making remarks on air considered offensive to Sunni Muslims, and of stirring sectarian tensions in the Islamic world. Ofcom, which regulates communications in the UK, told Al Arabiya News it has recently launched an investigation into the station. "Fadak TV is under investigation by Ofcom and if the channel is found to be breaking our rules, then we will take robust action. Our powers allow us to issues fines and take channels off air," a spokesman said.[/ltr]

[ltr]Northern Ireland and Eire:[/ltr]

[ltr]A 26 year old man arrested in connection with the murder of former dissident republican leader Tommy Crossan last Friday, has been released. Crossan, a former senior Continuity IRA member, was killed at an industrial complex in west Belfast. Police are investigating dissident republican links to the murder. Crossan had been expelled from the Continuity IRA several years ago having fallen out with other dissidents.[/ltr]

[ltr]Allegations were made this week regarding Gerry Adams’ claims that he was never a member of the IRA. Ex-IRA member, Peter Rogers has alleged that Adams along with Martin McGuinness, ordered him to transport explosives from Ireland to the UK in the 1980s. Rogers was travelling through Wexford in a vehicle containing the explosives when he was stopped by police officers, resulting in him killing Garda Detective Seamus Quaid. Sinn Fein deputy party leader Mary Lou McDonald has defended Mr Adams, stating the allegations were nothing new and were being made in the heat of an election campaign.[/ltr]

[ltr]A former IRA man has said Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness gave him orders when they were Provo commanders. Peter Rogers, 69, claimed he met the Sinn Fein leader and Deputy First Minister in Dublin to discuss moving liquid explosives to England in 1980. Rogers, who was convicted of murdering a Garda in 1980, said he was ordered to attend the meeting because he feared the material was too unstable to move as part of the IRA’s terror campaign. Rogers asserts that both Adams and McGuinness were at the meeting and gave him orders to transport the explosives to Britain. Mr Adams has always denied he was in the IRA while Mr McGuinness said he left the terror group in the 1970s.[/ltr]

[ltr]A masked dissident republican terrorist launched a chilling attack on Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, calling him a “traitor to Ireland”. Scores of hardliners gathered at a Lurgan graveyard last weekend to mark the Easter Rising, as a spokesperson for Continuity IRA warlords warned they “will rid this country of the Brits, once and for all”.[/ltr]

[ltr]A US Government official has said that her government will “co-operate fully” with a PSNI investigation into whether a senior Sinn Fein figure masterminded a post-ceasefire gun-running operation which continued until 2000. Speaking during a visit to Belfast this week, Julieta Valls Noyes, a deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department, was reluctant to comment in detail about [gun running] allegations made in a BBC programme last month.[/ltr]

[ltr]International:[/ltr]

[ltr]EU diplomats meet on Monday to agree the names of more Russians to be targeted in a broadening of sanctions over separatist actions in Ukraine. The US and other G7 states are also planning further steps against Russia, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. On Sunday, pro-Russian separatists freed a foreign observer seized in east Ukraine. Seven others are still held. The team was shown to the media, a move described as "revolting" by Germany - the native country of four of them. The group was operating under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is continuing efforts to free the others.[/ltr]

[ltr]Russia last week accused the United States of controlling the actions of the pro-West Ukrainian government, saying that Washington was now "running the show" in Kiev. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the media that Ukraine had chosen to re-launch military operations against separatists in the east during a visit to Kiev by US Vice President Joe Biden. Mr Lavrov also said that Russia will respond if its interests in Ukraine are attacked [...] He said, “If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in full accordance with international law." he sparring between Russia and the West over the turmoil in eastern Ukraine intensified as US Vice-President Joe Biden told Moscow that “time is short” for it to comply with an accord reached in Geneva last week on lowering tensions in the region if it is to avoid new punitive sanctions.[/ltr]

[ltr]A car bomb exploded outside the main gate of a police station in Nairobi on Wednesday, killing four people including two police officers. The incident happened after police in the Kenyan capital stopped what they believed was a suspicious car at a set of traffic lights in Pangani. The car exploded as police took the occupants away to be questioned. A controlled detonation was carried out by bomb disposal officers shortly after the initial blast.[/ltr]

[ltr]A man understood to be al Qaeda’s chief bomb maker is believed to have died in an ambush by special forces in Yemen. Ibrahim al-Asiri, who is said have masterminded behind the underwear bomb plot in 2009, is understood to have been travelling in a vehicle at the time. If al-Asiri is confirmed as among the dead, he will be the most senior al Qaeda member to be killed since Osama bin Laden.[/ltr]

[ltr]A member of al-Qaeda's senior leadership, Sanafi al Nasr, has relocated to Syria, where he is living openly ... according to counter-terrorism analysts and social media messages. "This is a guy who fought with al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. He is a spokesman for the Nusra Front. He's connected, if not a planner, for the al-Qaeda core. This demonstrates the integration of al-Qaeda and all its levels," Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies said. "And the fact that it's (al-Qaeda leadership) now seeking out Syria as a core
area of operations, this explains a lot about, I think, the new direction of al-Qaeda today."[/ltr]

[ltr]Syria's regime has widened its campaign of gas attacks with an assault on a rebel-held town that reportedly killed a child last week, as diplomats warned that Damascus may withhold part of its chemical weapons arsenal from the UN destruction program. A boy evacuated to a hospital near the Turkish border died in the clinic where several adults were also treated for the effects of contamination. British officials said the repeated use of chemicals in bombs in recent days compounded fears that President al-Assad was withholding chemical weapons for use against the opposition. Victims of the latest apparent chlorine bomb attack were shown gasping for breath and displaying acute poisoning symptoms at opposition-run clinics.[/ltr]

[ltr]Three American medical staff members died when an Afghan security official opened fire this week at an American-run Christian hospital in Kabul in the latest violence targeting foreigners in Afghanistan. [...] Over the past three months, as Afghanistan is in the midst of electing a new president, 20 foreigners have been killed in separate attacks targeting civilians. The attacks have occurred at a popular restaurant, an upscale hotel and other venues where foreigners congregate.[/ltr]

[ltr]The youngest person ever to be prosecuted for terrorism offences in the US, Mohammed Hassan Khalid, was sentenced to five years imprisonment last week for engaging in an online jihadist plot to kill a Swedish artist. Khalid pleaded guilty last May to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists when he was 15, after communicating on the internet with Colleen LaRose, known as ‘Jihad Jane’. Khalid’s defence argued that his immaturity at the time, his alienation as a foreigner and the effects of Asperger’s syndrome should be taken into account when sentencing. Khalid, now 20, has already spent three years in custody.[/ltr]

[ltr]A New York jury has heard accused terrorist Abu Hamza al-Masri gloat over the 9/11 attacks and the 2000 bombing of a US Navy ship. "Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center," the hook-handed preacher told a television reporter in a videotaped interview that prosecutors played in Manhattan Federal Court. When asked whether he approved of the suicide attack on the USS Cole, Abu Hamza responded, "Of course. I agree with it." Abu Hamza, 56, is charged with supporting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The feds claim he aided a deadly kidnapping of tourists in Yemen in 1998 and plotted to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon in 1999. Abu Hamza was extradited to the US from the United Kingdom in 2012 after being indicted in 2004.[/ltr]

[ltr]The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared this week in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the US hadn't been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. 'The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,' a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told reporters. On September 11, 2012 armed terror-linked militias attacked the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, one of whom was the US Ambassador, Christopher Stevens.[/ltr]

[ltr]A film due to be screened at the 9/11 Memorial Museum has been blasted by a prominent Muslim cleric who claims it will 'greatly offend' Islam. Sheik Mostafa Elazabawy, the imam of Masjid Manhattan, said the seven-minute documentary, which is designed to explain to visitors the historical roots of the terrorist attacks, may confuse viewers about the difference between al Qaeda and Muslims. The film, ‘The Rise of Al-Qaeda’, refers to the terrorists as Islamists who viewed their mission as a jihad.[/ltr]

[ltr]The captors of an American soldier [Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl] held for nearly five years in Afghanistan have signalled a willingness to release him but are unclear which US government officials have the authority to make a deal, according to two individuals in the military working for his release. Critics of the release effort blame disorganisation and poor communication among the numerous federal agencies involved.[/ltr]

[ltr]Tony Blair has warned Western leaders they must put aside their differences with Russia over Ukraine to focus on the threat of Islamic extremism. In a speech the former UK prime minister - now a Middle East envoy - said powerful nations must "take sides" and back "open-minded" groups. [...] In his speech at Bloomberg, Mr Blair called on Western leaders to "elevate the issue of religious extremism to the top of the agenda". And they must co-operate with other countries - "in particular, Russia and China" - regardless of "other differences". He argued the threat posed by a radical view which "distorts and warps Islam's true message" was "spreading across the world. It is destabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively."[/ltr]

[ltr]Christians are increasingly reluctant to express their religious views because they are being “turned off” by the “disturbing” and “very damaging” rise of religious fundamentalism, the Attorney General has said. Dominic Grieve said that atheists who claim that Britain is no longer a Christian nation are “deluding themselves” and must accept that faith has shaped this country’s laws and ethics and he added that 1,500 years of Christian values are “not going to disappear overnight”. He warned that people are being discouraged from openly declaring their beliefs because of the “deep intolerance” of religious extremists of all faiths, including Islam and Christianity.[/ltr]

[ltr]Israel has officially suspended US-sponsored peace talks after rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas ended a seven-year split to create a united government. The decision to suspend talks was reached after a six-hour meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Security Council in Jerusalem. "The government of Israel will not hold negotiations with a Palestinian government that is backed by Hamas, a terror organisation that calls for Israel's destruction," a statement released after the meeting said. It comes a day after the two Palestinian factions announced they will attempt to form an interim government within weeks.[/ltr]

[ltr]Cyber News:[/ltr]

[ltr]A comprehensive study on global cybersecurity has revealed that hacking for the purposes of spying grew significantly in 2013, partly as a result of increased cyber-espionage from eastern Europe. The Data Breach Investigations Report, an annual security study by US telecoms firm Verizon, detailed more than 63,000 confirmed security incidents reported by 50 major organisations. Almost half of all spying intrusions were blamed on east Asian nations including China, but one of the key findings of the report was that hackers operating in eastern Europe accounted for a growing proportion of espionage-related security breaches. "The percentage of incidents attributed to east Asia is much less predominant in this year's dataset," the report stated. "The 2013 dataset shows much more activity attributed to Eastern European actors, Russian-speaking ones in particular."[/ltr]

[ltr]The FBI has warned healthcare providers their cybersecurity systems are lax compared to other sectors, making them vulnerable to attacks by hackers searching for Americans' personal medical records and health insurance data. Health data is far more valuable to hackers on the black market than credit card numbers because it tends to contain details that can be used to access bank accounts or obtain prescriptions for controlled substances.[/ltr]

[ltr]Significant Forthcoming Anniversaries:[/ltr]

[ltr]April 28, 2011: Bomb kills 15 in Marrakech cafe frequented by Westerners in first major attack in country since May 2003; government blames AQIM but group denies responsibility
April 29, 1992: Rioting in Los Angeles following verdict in Rodney King case
April 30, 1975: The war in Vietnam ends as Saigon surrenders to the Vietcong.
April 30, 1973: President Nixon takes responsibility for the Watergate scandal but denies any personal involvement
April 30, 1980: Iranian Embassy siege in London – ended on May 5th in a resolution by 22 Special Air Service Regiment.[/ltr]

[ltr]1 May 2010: Vehicle bomb fails to detonate in Times Square, New York City, as alert street vendor notifies police of smoking vehicle; Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan claims responsibility for the attempted attack
1 May 1993: In Sri Lanka a suicide bomber kills President Premadasa during May Day celebration
2 May 2011: Osama Bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda and responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people, is killed by U.S. forces in Abbottabad
2 May 1982: The Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, is sunk by a British submarine in Atlantic off the Falkland Islands killing 368 men on board
3 May 2006: Zacharias Moussaoui is jailed for life for aiding the 9/11 attacks
5 May 1982: Death of the first Provisional IRA hunger-striker, Bobby Sands
5 May 1980: End of Iranian Embassy siege in London by 22 Special Air Service Regiment.
7 May 2007: Authorities disrupt plot to attack Fort Dix military base in New Jersey
8 May 1945: Victory in Europe (VE) Day
8 May 1985: Firebomb attacks on US Citibank and Xerox buildings in Spain
11 May 1998: India carried out the first of two nuclear detonation tests
13 May2003: Al-Qaeda mount attacks on three housing compounds in Saudi Arabia killing 20 (7 U.S. nationals) and injuring nearly 200.
13 May 1981: Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul in Italy
14 May 1948: Founding of the State of Israel. Palestinians mark this day on May 15th.
16 May 2003: Five near-simultaneous suicide bombings in Casablanca kills 42 people
16 May 1978: Italian statesman Aldo Morro is murdered by the Italian Red Brigades
17 May 1974: Loyalist vehicle bombs in Dublin, Eire, kills 22 people.
18 May 1980: The Peruvian Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorist group began its terrorist campaign
20 May 2011: Suicide bomber on motorbike attacks US Consulate vehicle in Peshawar, killing one Pakistani and wounding 10 others.
21 May 2002: VBIED outside US Embassy in Lima, Peru kills nine Peruvians.
21 May 1991; Assassination by a female PBIED of Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi
24 May 1994: Four Islamists are each jailed for 250 years for imprisonment for the February 1993 VBIED attack on the World Trade Center.
24 May 2000: Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.
27 May 1964: Founding day of FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
29 May 1972: Japanese Red Army terrorists mount grenade and automatic weapons assault on passengers at Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport killing 26 people
30 May 2001: The founder of the extremist group, the Japanese Red Army announces its dissolution, regrouping as a legal entity[/ltr]

[ltr]Visit Dilitas at our Facebook page.[/ltr]

[ltr]Ensure that your own security arrangements are adequate and robust at all times.
Report any suspicious activity to Police immediately
Confidential Anti Terrorist Hotline: 0800 789 321 or dial 999[/ltr]

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