‘Three US officers from a specialist FBI counter-terror unit are expected to land at Heathrow on Tuesday, with another 10 arriving within the week and dozens more over coming months.
They will monitor suspect passengers as well as investigate “terror hot-spots” across Britain in the wake of the beheading of American James Foley in Iraq. Last night, however, critics claimed their arrival was an admission that cuts to police and the UK Border Force had left Britain out of its depth and overwhelmed in the war on terror.
Officially, US officers who have been monitoring terrorist activity ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 will liaise with the Metropolitan Police’s secretive SO15 counter-terrorism command and MI5.
However, there are fears they eventually intend to conduct their own parallel investigations and recruit their own informants in UK and European jihadi circles’
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Niamh Harris