The Associated Press
LONDON- Police and security services face the nearly impossible task of watching over hundreds of potential terrorists, Britain’s top police officer said Friday, a day after official reports said better surveillance might have prevented last summer’s bombings in London.
A report released Thursday by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee said security forces had come across two of the July 7 suicide attackers before they struck, but that only limited attempts were made to investigate them because officers were focused on more urgent operations.
It suggested that security forces might have uncovered the cell in time if they had more resources.
However, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said there were “hundreds of people out there involved in thinking about and financing terror.” To properly keep watch on just one suspect, he said, takes at least 10 people.
“The idea that the security services or the police could pick up everybody is, I think, almost impossible,” he said on LBC radio.
It was also difficult for security services to judge “how many of those people are doing it for real or how many are on the edges because it is exciting,” Blair said.
The commissioner voiced hope that the publication of the reports would restore public vigilance against possible future terrorist attacks that he said had been “slacking off” in the 10 months since the London bombings, in which four bombers killed 52 commuters and injured hundreds more.
“We need to keep those deaths and life-threatening injuries in front of us,” Blair said.