ONE of the world's top spies has warned major world cities are at risk of a fresh September 11-style terrorist attack within the next decade.
And he feared a scenario in which a nuclear device was triggered.
Efraim Halevy, former head of Israel's top-secret national intelligence group Mossad, also warned Western societies like Australia were fighting international terrorism "with one arm tied behind their backs".
Mr Halevy said complacency was not an option, despite some recent setbacks for terror organisations.
"I believe the terrorist threat internationally is still a very omnipresent one," he said.
"Despite setbacks al-Qaeda and its proxies have suffered, especially in the allied operations in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, the threat is very present."
This left open prospects of mass-scale terror.
"The base assumption is that in the next decade or so there might be an attempt to carry out a massive terrorist attack in a major city," he said.
"We have to be very careful about being complacent just because there has been no major terrorist act in the last several years."
Mr Halevy pointed to civil defence exercises in US cities in recent years.
"One of the scenarios exercised was the possibility of a nuclear event in a major city. These are not imaginary threats. (They) are very, very clear, and one has to be vigilant," he said.
Asked if the threats include a "dirty bomb" -- a device combining radioactive material with standard explosives -- he said: "There are all kinds of configurations."
The risk of mass human casualties had to be taken seriously.
"When you have a threat of this kind with a terrible consequence, even if it's just a 5 per cent chance of happening, you have to treat it as a 100 per cent threat," he said.
Mr Halevy pointed to UK intelligence indicating there were 200 groups of terrorist cells still operating.
"There's no reason to believe these groups will evaporate into thin air. We have to take it for granted (they) are hatching plots of one kind or another," he said.
The interview gave an insight into the thinking at the top of one of the world's most secretive spy operations.
Until 1996, the identity of the Mossad boss was not made public.
Mr Halevy has been in Australia as a guest of the NSW branch of Israeli environmental group the Jewish National Fund.
He led the Mossad from 1998-2002 -- four pivotal years in the rise of modern terror.
During his time at the Mossad helm, terrorism moved to the centre of the world agenda, with al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998 -- and ultimately the September 11, 2001 US attacks.
Mr Halevy denied widely-reported claims the Mossad, under his watch, had passed on intelligence to the US a month before 9/11 revealing several terrorists had slipped into the country and were planning a major attack.
"I have no such recollection. There was an understanding al-Qaeda and Islamic terror was developing as a serious threat both to Israel and international security," he said.
"To the best of my knowledge, I had no specific information about 9/11."
To avoid new attacks, democracies needed to beef up anti-terror laws.
"A democracy has to fight terror with one arm tied behind its back. Try it. Take a rifle, tie your hand behind your back, try and fire it and see what happens," he said.
He argued for much broader detention powers in the West.
"There is merit in having legislation that allows you to keep a detainee suspect much longer without giving him access to lawyers," he said.
Mr Halevy did not apologise for this stance, given the global terrorism threat: "You have to protect human rights. But what is the No. 1 human right? It is the right to live."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment