‘UK security services warned for a decade about wars abroad sparking home terror’

Woolwich machete attack is a result of the policy of British government that continues wars abroad despite security services’ warnings that this would increase the danger of terrorism in the UK, Lindsey German from Stop the War coalition has told RT.

The investigation is ongoing into the Wednesday’s killing of the British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby by two alleged Islamist terrorists in south-east London.

According to Lindsey German this attack could have been influenced by the British government’s foreign policy: the country has been involved in foreign military interventions in Afghanistan and then Iraq for over a decade.

The first attacks - the 2005 London Underground bombings - took place “just after Tony Blair was re-elected, the week that the G8 leaders were meeting in Scotland,” she told RT, adding that in her view, those things were “clearly connected.”

What happens now, she went on to say, is that wars abroad “are very much ignored by lots of the media.” At the same time, it is a great source of grievance to many people in Britain. As polls reveal, there is a very strong opposition to the war, particularly among working people. 

“But there are still many people being killed by drones in Pakistan and Yemen. The war has spread: there’s intervention in Syria, Mali. It has now spread to Africa as well as to parts of the Middle East and South Asia,” German pointed out.

For a small group of people actions like the London butchering of the soldier is a way to deal with this, the expert believes.

“I might disagree very much in terms of what should be done to oppose these wars. I believe in opposing them through campaigning, through demonstrating. But I think it is the sense of the frustration that people feel. And they feel as well that Muslims are being more and more demonized in this country and elsewhere in Europe. And this is one of the responses that people have,” German said. 

She believes, that “we should listen to the words of the perpetrators” themselves who very clearly linked the attack with the wars abroad. Besides that, “the British security services who for getting on for 10 years now have been saying that the wars abroad will make terrorism much more likely here in Britain.”

The fact that the British government and the Mayor of London “won’t acknowledge this I think is really a continuation of a view and a policy which simply is carrying on with these wars in the face of all recognition that actually these wars haven’t succeeded in doing anything – let alone getting rid of terrorism,” German reasoned.

The UK security services will now be investigated after it was revealed that MI5 knew of both suspects in the Woolwich murder for eight years.

However, according to Claude Moniquet from the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, it was not possible to prevent the tragedy. The suspects were known mainly for participation “in violent demonstrations and radical opinions,” he told RT. 

“As you know, in Great Britain the freedom of speech and freedom of opinion is quite a dogma so it’s impossible to act against people for their beliefs and what they say,” the expert on terrorism observed. Besides that, nothing in the past indicated that this particular man “could kill in the streets in cold blood.”

In Moniquet’s opinion, attacks like the recent violence in London and the Boston Marathon bombings are becoming “a trend” and are likely to continue since it is very simple to organize them: you only need a knife or a homemade bomb to bring terror to the streets.

“Of course, you will never reach the violence of 9/11, or the Moscow underground attack, or Madrid or London. But if in the coming year, we have four-five attacks like this in the US and some European countries, and each time the attacker kills 2-3 people, it will have a real impact on the relations between Islam and the western world,” Moniquet, who is former French intelligence officer, noted. And that is exactly what terrorists want as they belong “to the ideology of Al Qaeda,” he concluded.