Intelligence agencies warn of growing 'Lone Wolf' terror threat to UK ahead of Olympics

Herald Globe (ANI) Wednesday 8th February, 2012

Britain and the Olympics face a growing threat from "lone wolf" terrorists who have taught themselves how to build bombs using al Qaeda publications, a leading security think tank has warned.

According to Sky News, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), which employs former spies as senior analysts and has close connections to the British Armed Forces, said in a study that Africa and the Yemen were also rapidly becoming major training areas for terrorists.

RUSI's latest UK terrorism analysis said: "The growing number of lone wolves who are radicalised and then indulge in some 'terrorist tourism' are not normally part of a well-organised pipeline of guerrilla fighters going to the jihad.

"More usually, they are personally connected to family or friends who have already gone to a conflict zone.

"Britons are thought to make up about 25 percent of the 200 or so foreign fighters that the al Shabaab group in Somalia currently fields, and who are engaging in a deepening war on neighbouring Kenya and its tourist trade."

Nigeria is a newly identified potential breeding ground for radicalised Islamists with strong connections to immigrants in the United Kingdom, RUSI added.

The institute identified four main threats to the sporting spectacular.

First, a "traditional" attack organised by al Qaeda's "core" - which has been badly eroded by American drone strikes in Pakistan and the Yemen and by the killing of Osama bin Laden last year.

Second, a hitherto unexamined problem with the release of dozens of men convicted of terrorist offences from British prisons, who are expected to finish their sentences over the next 12 months.

Third, it said: "the lone wolf ...is perhaps the bigger threat and could extend to non-Jihadist terrorism, as we saw in the case of the Norwegian bomber Anders Behring Breivik".

Lastly, Rusi said there remained a dissident Irish republican rump which might try to disrupt the Olympics - although most experts see this as a very distant prospect. (ANI)