ExtremismBritain’s Security Officials Fear More Lone Wolf Attacks in Wake of MP’s Murder
The man held for the fatal stabbing last week of a British lawmaker had been referred to the British government’s anti-extremism program, called Prevent, because of his radical Islamist views, but the country’s security services, including MI5 - Britain’s domestic intelligence agency - had not deemed him a serious threat requiring monitoring, confirmed British officials.
The man held for the fatal stabbing last week of a British lawmaker had been referred to the British government’s anti-extremism program, called Prevent, because of his radical Islamist views, but the country’s security services, including MI5 - Britain’s domestic intelligence agency - had not deemed him a serious threat requiring monitoring, confirmed British officials.
Police have not released the name of the suspect, but local media have identified him as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British national of Somali descent. Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that the suspect’s father, Harbi Ali Kullane, a former adviser to Somalia’s prime minister, said British counter-terrorism police had visited him at his home in north London.
“I’m feeling very traumatized. It’s not something that I expected or even dreamed of,” the suspect’s father told the newspaper following the murder Friday of Conservative MP David Amess.
The lawmaker was stabbed multiple times while meeting with constituents at a church hall an hour’s drive east of London. The Metropolitan Police have confirmed early investigations of the slaying suggest “a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism,” but have so far refrained from going into any details publicly.
Ali was born in London. Many members of his wider family live in Somalia, where his aunt is head of a security think tank in Mogadishu. Ali’s uncle is Somalia’s ambassador to China.
Britain’s security and counter-terror agencies have warned cabinet ministers of a possible wave of future attacks by what they term “bedroom radicals,” lone wolf militants radicalized online during pandemic lockdowns. Investigators are trying to establish whether Ali fits that profile and whether his radicalization intensified during the lockdown.
They have so far found no evidence that he traveled overseas to train, a British official told VOA. The Sun newspaper quoted security sources as saying that Ali became increasingly radicalized after watching militant videos on YouTube.
Amess Eulogized
The 69-year-old Amess is the second British MP to have been murdered in the past five years, and his death has prompted nationwide horror and outrage. Politicians across political divides praised him as a hard-working “gentleman MP,” one who eschewed a ministerial career in favor of focusing on the needs of his constituents. An independent-minded Conservative, he was widely known as a campaigner for animal welfare.
