CT STRATEGY
IDENTIFYING LESSONS Expectations of what can be achieved when lessons are sought on improving counter terrorism must be realistic, writes Dr Samantha Newbery, reader in International Security at the University of Salford
LEARNING LESSONS: IMPROVING COUNTER TERRORISM T wenty-two terror plots were foiled in the UK between March 2017 and September 2019. But not all terror attacks are stopped: 2017 saw attacks take place in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park. After an attack, commendable efforts are made to identify lessons for the emergency services, MI5 and other organisations involved with counter terrorism. Nine reviews into the 2017 attacks were carried out by MI5 and Counter Terrorism Policing. Yet when changes are found to be necessary, implementing those changes is not as straightforward as might be hoped: lessons might be overlooked and therefore not identified at all; implementing lessons can take time; and constraints on resources constitutes a challenge that
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COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 41
must be taken into account. Expectations of what can be achieved when lessons are sought, and when efforts are made to implement those lessons, must be realistic.
IDENTIFYING AND ACTING ON LESSONS At the time of the Manchester Arena attack of May 2017, perpetrator Salman Abedi was not one of MI5’s 3,000 active Subjects of Interest (SOI). He was not, therefore, being monitored. Abedi had briefly been an SOI in 2014 and again in 2015 but was classified as no longer posing a threat. David Anderson QC, formerly the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, concluded in his report on the 2017 attacks that when Abedi travelled to Libya in mid-April 2017, MI5 ought to have initiated the procedure to