The Intelligence is Out there!

The Intelligence is Out there

Many of the attackers involved in the recent attacks in Belgium, France, London and Manchester had criminal records and were known to police or the security services. The offences involved covering the full spectrum of offences including drug dealing, drug-taking, robberies, burglaries and assaults. ‘Two of the suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and his younger brother Khalid, both residents on Max Roos Street since the beginning of the year, had managed to go undetected for so long? And all this despite a record of violent crime in Belgium and, in the case of the older brother, a clear warning from Turkey in June that he was on his way back to Europe after being arrested as a suspected terrorist while on his way to Syria?’ (Higgins & de Freytas-Tamura, 2016). The open report on the Westminster, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, London and the Manchester arena attacks of March-June 2017 (Anderson, 2017), also corroborates this theory.

In the United States Freilich, Chermak, & Gamarra (2006) conducted a review of far-right political and extremists' studies. Their research studied over two hundred and fifty studies from the specialist subject areas of criminology, political science, sociology, and terrorism of crimes. Their findings revealed that the persons studied had, at some time been the subject of criminal investigations by state and federal police. The crimes included firearms, racist and hate attacks, criminal damage, violence, drugs, cybercrime and various preparatory crime including bank robberies, counterfeiting, credit card theft and weapons procurement.