Deployment of troops following Manchester bombing

Goooner

Look how RIPA gets abused by local councils and various other agencies.

If you've got nothing to hide...., if it saves one life....

Where does it stop, give them an inch and they'll take a mile, they always do.

Pacifico

Perhaps Sadiq Khan is correct - terrorist attacks are just part and parcel of living in a big city. I certainly dont see any appetite for extreme measures to combat them.

Sonic67

Sticking a lock on your front door won't stop a determined burglar.

Do you have a lock on your front door?

The Dude

We either accept the risk of terrorism as part of everyday life and let the security services carry on as they are, or we change the parameters of what we call everyday life and give the security services increased powers, it's a simple enough choice.

For now there's only one answer that we find acceptable, in time that may well change but I'm hoping we don't get that far into this nightmare.

Cocksure

Unfortunately yes

And thankfully the British public is tough, we've lived through the ira (though they did at least give a 15 min warning), they will live though this and whoever comes next

Defeat them on the beaches etc, as true now as it was then. Thankfully Britain isn't like America.

The Dude

His mother and father are now believed to be back living in Libya. For a while he left the UK too, but he is believed to have returned in the past few days
Taken from this BBC article.




- Did anybody just think 'Donald Trump Muslim ban' ?

IronGiant

I certainly think we should be looking very closely at people (especially young males) coming from areas where radicalisation is known to be ongoing.

Cocksure

I don't think they can or ever will be able to.

Look how much the police have spent watching julian Assange, 15 million since 2010 and they could be open and knew where he was.

Only hope is to try and make prevent work somehow. The BBC are saying that the bomber was reported to the terrorist hot line 7 years back.

Not having a go at the authority as there was likely little they could do at the time as no laws or red flags where raised.  What's more worrying is that people hadn't rung up about him in the past 12 months.

But then there is little trust anymore with the current setup clearly not working

doug56hl

Troops on the street is mainly an exercise in public confidence. It wouldn't do much at all to curb out of the blue attacks like Manchester Arena.

What could be done is an expansion of both police and army counter terror units, enough for more to be on alert and ready at one time , in more places. Plus greater contingency for dealing with displaced, confused or stranded crowds resulting from such incidents. e.g. formal stand by arrangements involving transportation, accommodation, feeding, list making, etc. There maybe is already - I'm not privy.

But troops on the street ? Nah. Of course they could augment police with stop and account / stop and search, but I don't want that. Not in our tradition and they aren't trained as police.

There is also the danger of the troops themselves being a magnet for hit and run attack and perhaps abduction.

apolloa

I don't get the point you are trying to make.
That the current deployment is useless/pointless?
Or that this is locking the stable door after the horse has bolted...
If the latter I'd agree.

While perhaps too late now a more proactive approach could have been used. It's reported that MI5 is completely overwhelmed and doesn't have the manpower to keep active checks on more than a small proportion of the known 3,000 odd potential terrorists. Both the recent terrorist incidents involved known but 'low risk' people of interest. Both turned out to be very high risk.

Given that there are around 400 returned Jihadis from Syria who were mostly allowed to roam free it's lucky that there hasn't been more trouble so far. How many of the IS/Daesh/Al Nusra trained returnees had acquired bomb making skills...

And it is bomb makers that now seem to be the concern as it's being reported that the device used at Manchester was more sophisticated in design that would be expected for an unskilled home made one.

It's therefore surprising that use of preventative detention/internment wasn't used for some or all of the Syrian returnees just as at Long Kesh/HM Prison Maze during the troubles in N.I.
OK might have caused human rights issues, but there is the blanket coverall that anyone who served with IS/Daesh could be considered to have committed war crimes. It's also quite usual for pre trial detention to be done in serious cases of risk of harm to the public.

It seems common to arrest and prosecute those trying to get to Syria to join IS/Daesh but not, apart from a small percentage, those who have returned from Syria after being involved fighting with IS/Daesh. Whether this is due to the numbers involved isn't clear but when a precedent has been set on prosecution for attempting to join, and then not to prosecute for actually joining and/or fighting seems totally illogical.

It's been variously reported that only 54 out of 400 have been prosecuted in the UK after returning from Syria, or just 1 in 8.  It's also been reported that the previously mentioned figure is incorrect and that only 14 people have actually been convicted. Ministers admit they mistakenly claimed the number was 54 earlier this year as it wrongly included those who'd been fundraising for terrorism or trying to reach the war zone.

See also the interactive data at the BBC the most comprehensive online record of its kind, telling the story of more than 200 Britons who have died, been convicted of offences relating to the conflict or are still in the region. Who are Britain’s jihadists? - BBC News