Criticism was mounting against the British Foreign Office on Saturday for leaving the British consulate in Istanbul exposed to a terrorist attack, despite repeated warnings of a high level of threat.
As the Turkish authorities continued to question 18 suspects following the suicide bombing that left 28 dead and 450 injured last Thursday, questions were being asked about why Britain had not moved its consulate to a more secure part of the city, as the Americans had done.
”So much more could [have been] done,” said Paul Mercer, the Conservative Party’s security spokesperson. ”Why wasn’t our consulate in Istanbul shifted? It was attacked earlier on in the year, the same time as the American consulate was attacked.
”The Americans moved theirs to a less vulnerable position — we didn’t. It is questions like these that I do find very hard to answer.”
Mercer said British ambassadors were understandably reluctant to retreat behind high walls, but they had now seen the results.
”I do wonder why, for instance, you go to London [and] the only building that seems to be taking the suicide bombing threat particularly seriously is the US embassy,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme. ”We don’t see any of our great iconic targets being protected in the same way.”
Police charged with monitoring the threat in the United Kingdom have privately disclosed that they believe there are dozens of potential suicide bombers in that country. Sources close to senior policemen have disclosed that recent intelligence reports estimate that there are between 30 and 60 individuals who are a possible threat.
”The police know who some of these people are, but not all of them. They simply believe these are the sort of ball-park figures they are dealing with,” said a source familiar with police operations. ”Given there are two million Muslims in the UK, it is a tiny proportion. A substantial proportion of these thought to be a risk are recent or illegal immigrants, not British citizens. The problem is identifying individuals.”
Britain’s most senior police officer, Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has repeatedly given warnings that a suicide attack in the UK is ”inevitable”. He has said that British authorities have foiled a number of terrorist strikes.
”It’s not the people we know about that we are worried about,” said one Scotland Yard counter-terrorist officer. ”It’s the people we don’t know about that are the problem.”
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said it was vital that the need for security for staff overseas was balanced by giving them the scope to do their jobs properly.
”It is important that we actually hold to the premise that, while we must be vigilant and of course defend our own staff and those using the consulates and embassies, we also have to exercise a degree of common sense,” Blunkett said.
”It is very good intelligence that actually saves you in the end, not massive concrete blocks around every piece of British territory abroad, or for that matter all our iconic buildings.
”It won’t be people standing around waiting for suicide bombers that will save us, it will be very, very good intelligence.”
In Turkey, the clear-up operation continued on Saturday after the bombing that killed Roger Short, the British consul general.
On Saturday night it emerged that it had taken rescuers five hours to find Short’s body. The force of the explosion blew him out of the consulate and across the road, eyewitnesses said.
As the funerals took place on Saturday of two Turkish policemen killed in the consulate blast, Foreign Office officials insisted that security at Britain’s embassies abroad was adequate.
A policeman had opened fire at the van used in Thursday’s bombing but had been unable to stop it.
”There was already a review going on, but it was not specifically in response to Istanbul,” an Foreign Office spokesperson said.
”There are no plans to close embassies as a response to Istanbul.”
At least three groups connected to al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attacks.
Turkish newspapers named the bombers as Azad Ekinci and Feridun Ugurlu. Police sources said the pair hired the cars used in the suicide attacks last weekend on two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul, in which 25 people died.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that all four Istanbul suicide bombers were Turkish, and promised his government would ruthlessly track down their accomplices. — Guardian Unlimited Â