MI5 warning of al-Qaeda sleeper threat.

On Friday, I discussed a Spectator article in which security sources were quoted as saying that the head of MI5's recent speech had been intended, in part, "to prepare the public for a terrorist success", which is increasingly seen as inevitable. Now, the Spectator's sister publication, the Sunday Telegraph has "learned" that al-Qaeda is sending some of its trained British volunteers back to the UK, where they will keep a low profile as "sleepers". The volunteers are too valuable to al-Qaeda to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan so,

...MI5 and MI6 are working on the assumption that they are being ordered to return to their communities in Britain with instructions to establish secret, autonomous cells and to conduct independent terrorists operations without any direct input from al-Qaeda's high command...

...MI5 fears that it is impossible to estimate how many British Muslims have attended training camps over the past decade or how many are back in the UK planning attacks...

...A security source said: "We may see people who have been ‘blooded’ in Iraq, who are experienced in weapons handling and bomb making, arriving back in this country and they may cause a problem."

The ST then goes on to discuss precedents, including Dhiren Barot.

Despite the mounting evidence that a serious terrorist atrocity in the UK is almost certain to occur in the near future, there are still many on the left who regard Manningham-Buller and MI5's attempts to defend Britain from Islamic extremism a nothing more than "racism".

Tags: al-Qaeda, War on Terror