Airport attack triples size of terror squad

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 20:00

SCOTLAND's army of full-time police counter-terror experts has tripled since the Glasgow Airport attack, new figures revealed last night.

The Scottish Government said it had now funded almost 170 police and civilian specialists to protect the nation from Islamic and other extremists, compared with just over 60 two years ago.

The officers and support staff – including civilians with expertise in areas such as financial investigation – are in addition to an unknown number of MI5 agents operating north of the border.

Counter-terrorism units will hit their target of 166 full-time officers and support staff by the end of this financial year.

The Scottish Government last night confirmed funding of 1.75 million to recruit an additional 53 staff in 2009-10. That is on top of 50 individuals signed up last year.

There are understood to have been just 63 Scottish Government-funded police operatives at the time of the Glasgow Airport attack in summer 2007. The attempt to ram a jeep loaded with explosives into the terminal on one of its busiest days of the year stunned authorities. Police believe another terrorist attack is "likely" and the threat is "severe".

Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary (pictured), said last night:

"The Scottish Government is fully committed to the fight against international terrorism. These additional counter-terrorism officers will help to make our country more secure and allow the police to work with communities to raise awareness of terrorism and related issues to make Scotland a safer place."

Scottish Government funding for core counter-terrorism work has shot up by 6 million in three years to 14m a year.

SNP ministers have worked closely with UK colleagues on terrorism. Power over national security remains reserved to Westminster, but many of the day-to-day police activities are the responsibility of Holyrood. Both governments have signed up to the UK national counter-terrorism strategy, Contest.

The new funding will cover all the extra costs associated with the revised policy, which places more emphasis on luring potential terrorists away from extremists. MacAskill stressed the funding would improve the ability of the police to hunt down terrorists and their supporters, while allowing officers to work with communities.

The Scottish Government yesterday confirmed that it would work with the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and other key agencies to develop a programme to prevent terrorism. Scotland on Sunday last week revealed that Scotland would have a scheme to deradicalise extremists, including Islamists, by the end of the year.

Officials at a conference earlier this month said they would start up a "tartanised" version of England's Channel Project – a scheme which targets people, mostly young men, who have been flirting with extremist views – within six months.

Some senior detectives in Scotland have privately admitted they are struggling to recruit people with the kind of skills they need to tackle serious and organised crimes – because so many are being lured into counter-terrorism jobs. Strathclyde has got round that problem by combining its units that counter terrorism and fight organised crime.

The Scottish Government said it was gradually increasing funding for such recruitment to enable forces to find and train the kind of experts they need, in tough jobs such as intelligence assessment analysis, surveillance and security advice.

MI5, the security service, has never revealed how many people it has operated north of the border. It does, however, have a base in Glasgow and Scotland on Sunday last year revealed the overall number of Scottish spooks would reach around a dozen.