An alleged terrorist attack linked to the Israel-Hamas war has already taken place in the UK.
The Daily Telegraph was the first with the story, reporting late last week that an asylum seeker who arrived in the country in 2020 told the police, after being suspected of carrying out a terror attack in Britain, that he had done it for “Palestine.” The paper, which could not release details of the incident for legal reasons, said the individual was “bent on avenging deaths in Gaza” and had referred to Israel killing children in Gaza.
The case, which follows the Brussels terrorist attack carried out by an illegal migrant last week, has prompted questions over why the British public was—as one journalist put it—kept in the dark. One security source told the Telegraph that “they may be downplaying it so that they don’t have repeat attacks or copycat attacks.”
MPs have also questioned the apparent silence. Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said:
I think the public does have a right to know that something has happened. If they are worried about reaction, people need to know whether their streets are safe …
I understand the sensitivities. The issue is whether people have a right to know whether things are going on on their streets. It needs to be carefully done but we need a greater level of clarity about whether we have a problem about extremists on our streets.
A spokesman for Counter Terrorism Policing later insisted, however, that “any accusation that the public have been misled or that information has been deliberately withheld is wrong and grossly misleading.”
While there are questions over the reporting of this sensitive case, one counter-terror official, whom the Telegraph described as “senior,” suggested there was no doubt about it being linked to immigration. They said:
It just illustrates the risk when you get stressed individuals coming from all parts of the world, including places where they will have participated in or witnessed savagery. It is linked to migration. As a result of full-scale migration, we are getting a lot of people.
The individual at the centre of the alleged terrorist attack is currently in custody.
