LONDON – A senior Indian-origin police officer is in the running to takecharge as Britain’s anti-terrorism chief when Scotland Yard’s National Leadfor Counter Terrorism resigns next month.
Neil Basu, currently Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner andSenior National Coordinator for UK Counter Terrorism Policing, is tipped totake over one of the British policing’s toughest jobs from Mark Rowley, TheSunday Times reported.
Basu, whose father is of Indian origin, is a former Met Police commanderoverseeing organised crime and gangs. He has specialised in anti-terrorismpolicing for the past three years and is currently Rowley’s deputy. He hasbeen vocal about cracking down on British nationals who joined the IslamicState (ISIS) terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.
In a recent interview with the Combating Terrorism Centre in New York, hesaid that exclusion powers would be applied to about 200 of the 300fighters in the war zone as he revealed that about half of the 850 whotravelled from Britain to join ISIS had already returned and more than 100were dead. Of the remaining 300, two-thirds would be blocked from the UK.
“Like other countries, we operate on the principle that we don’t want youback, and therefore we will deprive you of your British passports for thoseamong these who end up coming back, we are absolutely waiting for them.That’s the bottom line,” he said.
“The big threat for us now is the ideology that’s been diffused onto theinternet and the calls for attacks by its followers in the West by ISISonline. The caliphate may have been defeated militarily, but it has nowbecome a virtual network,” he warned.
Other possible candidates for the post of Britain’s anti-terror chiefinclude Helen Ball, a Met Police assistant commissioner, and Dave Thompson,the West Midlands chief constable, from whose area numerous terrorist plotshave emerged in the UK.