MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Around 200 UK jihadists, who went to Syria to fight alongside the Daesh*, are thought to be alive and might decide to come home, something that would be a serious threat to national security, Neil Basu, Scotland Yard assistant commissioner, who is in charge of anti-terror policing in Great Britain, said on Wednesday.
Basu specified that these jihadists know that they will be on the police’s “radar” and are at risk of prosecution if they get caught.
“We’re not seeing, at this time, a lot of people wanting to come back or actually travelling back, it’s still a very small number. But you ask if we’re still worried about it… absolutely, it’s one of our main threats,” Basu said, as quoted by Sky News.
According to the assistant commissioner, the UK authorities are aware of the whereabouts of some UK jihadists abroad, but not all of them.
Basu recalled that in less than two years, the UK security services had foiled 18 terror plots in the country and that one in five tips given by the public yielded results.
“We need communities to stand up and report changes in behaviour that they are seeing within their communities which might actually help us stop these things before they happen”, he stressed.
The terror threat has remained high in the United Kingdom in recent years. The country has faced a number of bloody terror acts, most notably the attack on London’s Westminster Bridge and parliament grounds in March 2017, as well as a concert bombing in Manchester on May 22, 2017.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
