Police Chief: UK Attacks Have a ‘Domestic Center of Gravity’

London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told BBC Radio today that all indications are that the recent terrorist attacks carried out in Britain all were “largely domestic plots” driven by people in the country, and that there was no sign of any overseas direction in London or the other attacks.

The general perception of terrorism as primarily an overseas concern, coupled with ISIS’ interest in claiming credit for incidents they had nothing to do with, has misled a lot of people about the recent attacks, though the attacks appear to be by and large British citizens, and in many cases British-born citizens.

Information is finally starting to emerge on the London attacks from the weekend London Bridge attack. The first named attacked, Khalid Masoud, was born in Kent, though his parents were said to have been from Pakistan. The other two attackers were Khuram Shazad Butt, a Pakistani-born British citizen, and Rachid Redouane, who “claimed to be Moroccan or Libyan,” but about whom little is yet known.

Butt appears to be the only one of the three that was every even on police radar, with police and MI5 looking into him briefly at one point and deciding that he wasn’t enough of a threat to warrant continued monitoring. The other two apparently were totally unheard of.

That adds further credence to the narrative that the attackers were of the “lone wolf” variety, and not the sort of people who would’ve had international terror connections helping them along. That London Bridge was a “low tech, low sophistication” attack also suggests they didn’t have, or need, much help.