UK Security Minister: London’s transport network purging potential terrorists

With a number of Britons returning home from Syria and Iraq after joining the ISIS terror group, UK police and counter-terrorism forces are on high alert. Numerous terror plots – many of which have targeted London’s public transport infrastructure – have been thwarted throughout the country in recent years.

British Security Minister Ben Wallace announced today that London’s transport network is purging employees who have been identified as “potential terrorists,” as part of their latest initiative to bolster the capital’s security.

The minister said that numerous extremists who “would pose a risk to London and its transport network” had already been purged, without providing further details.

He went on to say that employees in other “sensitive” areas and sectors were also set to be screened and potentially fired if they are considered to be a security risk. One of the perpetrators of last year’s London Bridge terror attack had previously worked for London Underground.

“It’s reducing the insider threat. There are definitely people who have worked in sensitive areas that we have now removed who would pose a risk to London and its networks of transport. We’ve got to protect as well as pursue. There are more things we can do around where these people work,” UK Security Minister Ben Wallace told the Evening Standard newspaper on April 6.

“We have an acute number of people in this country who are attracted to extremism or violent extremism. You can’t arrest your way out of that so you have to develop a way that you can early intervene with some people. Disruption is really important.”

Minister Wallace also revealed that terror groups, such as Daesh and al-Qaeda, are targeting vulnerable people with autism, to lure them into carrying out terror attacks.

When asked about how UK citizens who have been captured by anti-Daesh forces in Iraq and Syria will be tried and dealt with, he said his government are working with its allies to develop a strategy.

“We are working with our allies, with America, with Iraq, our police here… they are in the custody of the Kurdish militias so there is more to run on that,” the minister said, referring to the two former ISIS “Beatles” who are being held by Kurdish forces.

Source: Sputnik