Why aren’t we taking the Islamist threat seriously?
by Tom Slater, spiked:
It’s been a long, hot summer – and a busy one for counterterror officials. While the prosecution of the suspect in the attempted car attack in Westminster this month is only starting to get underway, there have been a slew of terror trials and convictions that have quietly concluded these past few months.
On 31 May, Husnain Rashid, an Islamic State supporter from Lancashire, pleaded guilty to three counts of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts and one count of encouraging terrorism. He egged on other Islamists on the internet to attack Prince George, and had become a prolific pro-ISIS propagandist.
Five days later, 18-year-old Safaa Boular was found guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism. With her older sister Rizlaine and their mother Mina Dich (both of whom pleaded guilty to the same charges), she was planning a grenade and gun attack on the British Museum. In the end, the only glass ceiling she broke was in becoming the country’s youngest convicted female terrorist.
On 18 July, Naa’imur Rahman, 20, was convicted at the Old Bailey. Inspired by his jihadist uncle, Rahman had made contact with ‘ISIS recruiters’ who turned out to be FBI and MI5 agents. He asked them for a jacket and a rucksack stuffed with explosives. His plan was to blast his way into No10 Downing Street and behead the prime minister.
Two days after Rahman’s trial, Khalid Ali (…), 28, was handed three life sentences. He was apprehended in Parliament Square, just weeks after the 2017 Westminster Bridge attack, armed with knives. He had been on the police’s radar since he returned from Afghanistan, where he had spent five years making bombs for the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the trial continues of four men, believed to have Islamist links, who were arrested in December for plotting a Christmas bomb attack in Sheffield.
These plots were not all of the same scale or sophistication. While some of them came dangerously close to fruition, Rahman’s was clueless from the off. And Rashid’s main crime seems to have been crudely encouraging others to launch attacks, rather than launching any himself – a reminder of the blurry line between propaganda and incitement.
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