New units to tackle terror threat

Greater Manchester Police have established a Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), which is operational from Monday.

Three other units in West Yorkshire, London and the West Midlands are being established. Smaller Regional Intelligence Cells will also be set up in several other regions including Wales, the East Midlands and South West.

Over the next three years each CTU is expected to expand to around 350 staff to create a national counter terrorism infrastructure, working with MI5 and other security services including GCHQ.

The CTUs will gather intelligence on suspects planning attacks inside and outside the UK and also look at those financing, facilitating or helping to plan terror, and the networks or groups of people involved.

Their job will include carrying out covert surveillance operations with high-tech crime officers employed to recover data from computers seized in raids.

A problem faced by officers after such raids has been the volume of data seized from the computers of suspects - much of it in foreign languages and the units will have a pool of specially vetted interpreters to help them analyse the information.

Security experts at MI5 and Scotland Yard estimate there are 1,600 people involved in extremism in the UK with 200 "networks" involving people intent on violence, concluding the terror threat is "real, deadly and enduring".

An anti-terrorism unit was set up by Greater Manchester Police two years ago, but the new CTU will be much larger in size and in the scope of its work.

Each new unit aims to be "self generating", getting its work through "bottom-up" investigation, as well as following up leads from other security services.