Following the knife terrorism incident in Streatham in which a number of people have been wounded and where the terrorist was killed, there will be a lot of speculation as to the motivation for an attack that was described by as terrorism quite early on by the Metropolitan Police. Whilst at this stage I cannot discount the idea that this could be a deranged neo-Nazi, an outcome that the Guardian would love to see, some of the modus operandi and targeting used by the terrorist has a lot in common with other Islamic jihadist attacks. I must admit that this is highly unlikely to be the work of Methodists or Jains. It should be noted that the police declared this as a terror attack very very quickly.
The targeting of random members of the public, in a shopping area where people may be frequenting restaurants etc, along with the use of knives and the alleged presence on the now dead terrorist’s body of a ‘device’, all look similar to the MO of both London Bridge jihad attacks. We are still in a ‘fog of war’ situation regards this incident but there’s a lot of chatter that this was partially the result of an undercover police operation, where the terrorist was being chased by plain clothes police officers prior to the terror attack taking place.
If this claim about this being the end of an undercover police operation is true and this incident is confirmed as an Islamist terrorism incident (Sky News is saying that their sources are saying ‘Islamist’ ), yet another on the streets of the nation’s capital, then it shows that the problem of jihad attacks are worsening. It is feasible to protect citizens from attack at certain points, art galleries, theme parks, museums etc and at certain events like an FA Cup Final, but much more difficult to prevent attacks on random members of the public just going about their everyday business. Jihadists are being thwarted from carrying out attacks on somewhere like the Palace of Westminster so they are turning their attention to random Britons, a policy both more terror spreading and difficult for police to prevent.
If it turns out that the Government’s Terror suspect Watch List has today lost an Islamic name from it with the death of the Streatham terrorist, then the Government should prepare itself to have to face the wrath of Britons demanding that something be done about terrorism. There are many Britons now who are increasingly angry about the constant violence and crime coming from the members of the woefully misnamed ‘religion of peace. I dare say that there are good operational reasons why the police are being cagey about the identification of the terrorist such as nabbing any associates of this terrorist. This would especially be relevant if this was an undercover operation that went wrong by causing the terrorist to go ‘full savage’ too early. The police did do a good job taking down this terrorist although it’s a damn shame that his rampage could not have been prevented.
