Piers Akerman: Weak West must get tougher on jihadis

THE Manchester murders and the release of the coronial report into the Martin Place siege ­reveals the weakness of the Western response to the bloody perpetrators of ­terrorism, Piers Akerman writes.

THE juxtaposition of the Manchester murders with the ­release of the coronial report into the Martin Place siege ­reveals the weakness of the Western response to the bloody perpetrators of ­terrorism.

In both cases, the Islamist attackers were well known to the security authorities but for a variety of reasons were not believed to present serious threats to the public.

Not that those who have to deal directly with these murderers would necessarily agree — members of the military, police and other security agencies say they are forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs because of the political weakness of their governments.

Our forces go into action with aggressive lawyers overseeing their every action and monitoring the calibre of their weapons as well as a raft of NGOs ready to protest after every feat.

Their opponents go into action with as much lethal force as they can muster, the goodwill of millions of Muslims ­globally, and the support of ­legions of self-hating Westerners — the current equivalent of Communism’s useful idiots.

Floral tributes for the victims of the Manchester terror attacks. Picture: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

Salman Abedi, 22, the Mancunian murderer, had a track record that should have set alarm bells ringing whenever he came within cooee of an international airport but he and his family were in and out of Libya regularly enough for him to train with a terrorist group and, in a Europe without borders, he could access bomb makers on the Continent without questions being asked.

The explosive he used at the Manchester Arena, TATP, was the same as used in the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels.

All indications are that the British-born suicide bomber was part of an international terror cell. It has been reported in the UK that he flew via Dusseldorf airport in Germany and Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey when he returned from the Libyan capital in Tripoli to his home city of Manchester on May 18, four days before he targeted a pop concert by Ariana Grande, killing 22 people and injuring 119 more with the nail bomb in his backpack.

Five years ago, friends had reported him to the UK’s anti-terrorist hotline. Earlier this year, a relative warned authorities he was “dangerous”.

Six years ago, he was fighting alongside his father, Ramadan, in the western mountains of Libya during the so-called Arab Spring that saw Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi toppled. Libyan police have now arrested Ramadan and a younger brother, Hashem, while British police question his second brother Ismail, who was once reported to police for his extremist teachings at the ­notorious Didsbury mosque in Manchester.

Libyan authorities believe Hashem was planning a suicide attack in the capital, Tripoli. He was receiving money from Salman.

The findings of the Lindt Cafe siege inquest were handed down last week. Picture: Saeed Khan

They say Hashem was fully aware of the intent of his older brother to explode a bomb at the Ariana Grande concert, targeting mainly young girls and their mothers. Hashem also revealed how the two brothers would study Islamic State videos online since 2015, including ones explaining how to make a bomb.

Libyan officials say Ramadan, who used to work at Manchester airport as a security officer, is now a member of the Salafi jihadi movement. On ­social media he supported the group formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. He also claimed to support, but not be a member of, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. His friends from that group in Manchester included bombmaker Abd al-Baset Azzouz.

Investigators are also exploring the history of Salman’s mother, Samia, who is a nuclear scientist and friends with the family of Abu Anas al-Libi, the al-Qaeda computer expert involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed more than 200 people.

The UK government’s reluctance to take pre-emptory action against members of this family mirrors the manner in which the NSW DPP failed to secure Man Haron Monis after he was charged as an accessory to the murder of his Australian ex-wife (a court later found Monis’ girlfriend, Amirah Droudis, stabbed the ex-wife 14 times and set her on fire).

Man Monis had brought himself to notice by writing disgusting letters to former ­soldiers and publicly making threats against them. Not enough to have him off the streets before trial, however.

These examples illustrate how corrupted the political classes in Australia and the UK have become.

They believe it is electorally far safer to invite Islamists to sit at the high table than it is to take the tougher action that might have saved 22 lives in Manchester last week and two lives in Martin Place on December 15, 2014.

In this insane world, a nutty paper written by Aloysia Brooks, the former wife of wannabe Islamic martyr David Hicks, positing bees as a greater threat than terrorism is awarded a PhD from the University of Wollongong, and the ABC’s Q&A applauds US academic Lawrence Krauss’s view that we should be more wary of killer refrigerators.

Seriously. Is that chilling hum from the kitchen in the still of the night the sound of the household fridge conspiring with the neighbourhood cell of murderous freezers to ice us all?

Is there malevolence in the busy buzzing of those bees as they get about the garden?

The mullahs and imams preaching hatred would laugh — if laughter was permitted — at such depraved Western thought.

Our response to terrorism has been deliberately weakened and this must be remedied if we are to defeat Islamism as we defeated Nazism and Communism.

When our enemies expose themselves, as Abedi did, as Monis did, we must take the most severe action. Surely we have learnt that the risks are too great to do otherwise.