Daily Mail
July 7, 2014
A British jihadi who went to Syria plotted to launch a major terrorist atrocity after returning to the UK, The Mail on Sunday can reveal today.
The Muslim fanatic is suspected of planning a murderous gun and bomb attack in London on the orders of a terrorist ‘mastermind’ he met while in the Middle East.
Security sources claim it could have been the most serious terrorist strike since the bombings in London on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. However, the plot was foiled and the man was detained at gunpoint in the capital.
The news comes as security at British airports is being stepped up amid claims that terrorists are intent on smuggling bombs that cannot be detected by scanners on to aircraft travelling between the UK and the United States.
The explosives, which have no metals parts, could be concealed in clothes, and the technology is already thought to have reached Britons fighting in Syria and Iraq.
A number of British jihadis have also posted chilling messages online promising to use their ‘terror skills’ if they make it back to Britain. Others say they will return only once the black flag of Islam is flying over Downing Street.
David Cameron has warned that British jihadis coming back to the UK after fighting in Syria and Iraq are ‘the most serious threat to Britain’s security there is today’.
Now The Mail on Sunday has learned at least one such plot has already been detected and foiled. A security source said: ‘This could have been the most serious case since 7/7 if we had not stopped it. It perfectly illustrates the fears we have had about Syria for some time.’
Investigators believe that after the suspect travelled from the UK to Syria, he met a shadowy Islamist mastermind with designs on attacking the West, who encouraged him to plan an atrocity.
Security Service officials suspect that he returned to London with substantial amounts of cash and set about using it to buy weapons and bomb-making equipment.
He remained in contact with his controller in Syria – a terrorist kingpin thought to have established links to other would-be terrorists in Britain and Europe.
The suspect joined up with another extremist, and security officials were sufficiently concerned by intelligence that they launched an emergency operation to arrest them in London at gunpoint.
Further details of the investigation cannot be disclosed at this time, but MI5 is understood to believe it stopped an important attack, illustrating the dangers posed by the anarchy in Syria and Iraq.