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Analysis: Real IRA Attacks Part of Broader N. Ireland Military Buildup

March 10, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

RIRA gunman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On Saturday, March 7, two unarmed British soldiers were executed and two others seriously injured when three guerillas opened fire on them with semi-automatic weapons outside the British Army’s Massereene Barracks in Northern Ireland. Two nights later, a police officer was shot and killed in Craigavon, County Armagh, as he investigated reports of “suspicious activity” in the area. Northern Irish politics entered a new phase after these strikes, which have so far left three people dead and at least two seriously injured. Yet the attacks, which have been attributed to Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) paramilitaries, were hardly unexpected; on the contrary, they are part of a broader pattern of intensification of covert military and paramilitary activity in the troubled region. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Antrim town, Brian Nelson, British Army, County Armagh, Craigavon, Dolores Kelly, Gerry Adams, Gordon Kerr, Joseph Fitsanakis, Massereene Barracks, MI5, Northern Ireland, Police Service of Northern Ireland, RIRA, SDLP, SIGINT, Sinn Féin, Sir Hugh Orde, Special Reconnaissance Regiment (UK), UK

Former MI5 head warns UK turning into a police state

February 18, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Rimington

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is one thing for the British government to be accused of exploiting anxiety over terrorism to restrict civil liberties. It is quite another for these accusations to be made by the former Director-General of MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization. Dame Stella Rimington, who headed the secretive agency between 1992 and 1996, recently gave an interview to Spanish daily La Vanguardia, in which she accused the British government of “scaring people to pass laws restricting freedoms”. She criticized the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of failing to strike the proper balance between civil liberties and security, thus gradually giving in to “one of the goals of terrorism”, namely living “in fear and under a police state”. She also criticized the US for going “too far with Guantánamo and torture, [which] has the opposite effect [to security]: there are more and more suicide bombers who find greater justification”, she said. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with interviews, MI5, News, Stella Rimington, UK

CIA sees British Muslims as most dangerous threat

February 10, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 4, intelNews relayed reports from officials in Washington and London of an “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain” by the CIA. The reason behind this intense activity appears to be that the Agency considers militants in Britain’s one-million-strong Muslim community to be “the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on US soil”. Now a follow-up report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reveals that US President Barack Obama has been briefed in detail by CIA officials about the “dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain” in recent months. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with British Muslims, CIA, informants, Lashkar-e-Taiba, MI5, News, UK, United States, War on Terrorism

British MPs to consider torture allegations of MI5 detainees

February 2, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In 2007, British newspaper The Guardian disclosed that several Pakistani “war on terror” detainees in Pakistan were severely tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being interrogated by British security officers. Nearly two years after the revelations, a joint British Parliament committee has agreed to consider the allegations. On Tuesday, February 3, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights will hear evidence that interrogators with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) brutally tortured a number of prisoners before handing them over to interrogators working for MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency. In exposing the story in 2007, The Guardian suggested that the MI5 agents were aware of the torture, which involved severe beatings, fingernail extractions, and even physical threats with electric drills. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Human Rights Watch, interrogation techniques, ISI, Joint Committee on Human Rights (UK), MI5, News, Pakistan, Rawalpindi, torture, UK, War on Terrorism

MI5 Director in rare public interview

January 8, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The head of MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, has given the first public interview of an MI5 serving Director General in the organization’s 100-year history. Jonathan Evans, who became Director General of MI5 last April, answered questions in a face-to-face interview, on January 6, with a carefully selected group of security correspondents representing a handful of British media outlets. Among other things, Evans confirmed that al-Qaeda’s Pakistan-based leaders are actively trying to recruit British-born Muslims to stage attacks inside the UK. He estimated at “around 2,000” the number of individuals in Britain who are actively involved in such efforts, with many more involved in “fundraising, helping people to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. Sometimes they provide equipment, support and propaganda”, he said. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, British Muslims, economic espionage, Jonathan Evans, MI5, News, UK, War on Terrorism

CIA conducting ‘unprecedented’ operations in Britain

January 4, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has published an article (reprinted in Australia’s The Age) discussing what it describes as CIA’s “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain”. The paper cites “security sources in Washington and London” in revealing that the US spy agency is “recruiting and handling a record number of informers within the British Pakistani community”. Security circles in Washington have been known to express concerns about militant tendencies in that community, which is nearly one-million-strong. Bruce Reidel, a 26-year CIA veteran and al-Qaeda expert, who now advises US President Elect Barack Obama’s transition team, says that Britain’s Muslim community (whose members can travel to the US without visas) is “regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single-biggest threat environment.” Read more of this post