The knife attack took place Saturday evening in a park in Reading, UK. As tributes to the three victims pour in, the country seeks to probe the suspect's past. According to the British press, he had already been in the crosshairs of the intelligence services.
A minute of silence was to be observed at 10 a.m. in this city of 200,000 inhabitants located about sixty kilometers west of London, where the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, also visited. In front of the gates of the park where the drama took place, flowers were placed to pay tribute to the victims.
Released from prison in June
Front-page news: Almost all British dailies report on Monday that the suspect, a 25-year-old Libyan refugee, had been on the domestic intelligence radar (MI5) in 2019 because of plans to join a jihadist group abroad, but that no imminent risk had been identified.
According to The Telegraph , the young man was released from prison in June after being convicted of minor crimes unrelated to terrorism. He is also said to suffer from significant mental health problems. The suspect, who was arrested "five minutes" after the first call to the police, acted alone to carry out the attack, which the police say is "terrorist" and is not looking for anyone else.
A plan announced by Johnson
His profile raises questions in the country, after two attacks carried out in recent months in London by assailants who had already been convicted of terrorist offenses. Boris Johnson's Conservative government had announced a bill to increase penalties for perpetrators of terrorist acts, prohibiting their early release.
"I can assure you that if lessons are to be learned, if policies are to be changed, if we are to do things differently, that is absolutely what we will do," the Secretary of State for BBC said on Monday. Security, James Brokenshire. He said that the level of the terrorist threat remained classified as "high", the third degree on a scale of five.
Monitored profiles that can switch
Mark Rowley, the former chief of counterterrorism for the London police, said on the BBC that if "around 3,000 people are under investigation at any given time" for the terrorist threat they pose, " there are 40,000 people (…) whose names have touched the system ”. "And in these 40,000, (...) identify the one who will switch from a simple interest (for an extremist ideology) to a determined assailant, this is the most difficult problem facing (security) services", a he added.
Secretary of State James Brokenshire wanted to be reassuring, calling to remain "vigilant" but not to "worry". "People must remain vigilant (...) but we must continue our lives, we must ensure that those who seek to intimidate us, those who seek to use terror to try to change our way of life will not succeed". He said that over the past three years, the security services had foiled 25 terrorist attacks, stressing that the threat spanned a wide spectrum from the far right to jihadism.
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- Terrorist attack
- Terrorism
- United Kingdom