Napolitano’s fears over Somali and other terrorists

Author: Jonathan Rugman

Perhaps the most interesting line in the US homeland security secretary’s interview with me this morning concerns her fears over Somali Americans carrying out terrorist attacks inside the United States.

She concedes that a small number of Somalis have travelled from the US to Somalia to train in jihad.

“Right now we are talking about people going over there,” she says, “but any time you have individuals who are being trained, if they want to return, would have the operational-type skills to carry out an attack.. That is an area you need to pay attention to.”



This of course mirrors concerns in the UK, after Channel 4 News reported in an exclusive investigation back in February that a Somali from Ealing had blown himself up as a suicide bomber in Somalia.

Since then, the security service M15 has held a “recruitment fair” targeted at London’s Somalis, in an attempt to improve British intelligence from the inside.

I gather it didn’t go too well; somebody who was there tells me the “spooks” were heckled over British foreign policy in the Middle East, which many in the audience blamed for radicalising young British Muslims in the first place.

Still, Janet Napolitano says she thinks America has things to learn from Britain, in terms of dissuading Muslims from taking the radical path. Lessons in “prevention and engagement”, she told the press this morning, but she doesn’t say precisely what those lessons are.

She also refused to tell me how many terrorist attacks against the United States have been foiled since the Obama administration came in.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay is, she says, a “recruitment tool” for terrorists, “part of a radicalisation toolbox”, and she seems pretty confident that Congress can be persuaded that some of the inmates will have to be transferred to the United States, so the president’s executive order to close the prison by January 2010 can go ahead.

“I am not underestimating the difficulty” she tells me later. “It may be one of the most difficult problems the president inherited from the prior adminstration.”

And there seemed to be acknowledgement that attacks from “lone wolf” terrorist operators - racists, extremists of any kind - could pose as great if not greater a danger to the homeland than al-Qaida itself. ”It is certainly true that the so called lone wolf… that is just about the most difficult thing to stop.”

Source: Channel4.com