Due to a serious data breach at the Northern Ireland police, there is now great concern about an increased risk of attacks in the former civil war zone.
It was reported that the surnames, ranks and locations of all nearly 10,000 officers and employees had been accidentally released at the request of a citizen. The researchers assume that militant splinter groups are now also in possession of the data. It is now easier for them to identify and attack Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers and staff, Richard English of Queen’s University Belfast said on Tuesday.
Confidence in the police has weakened
“Intelligence gathering is an essential part of terror planning, and that task has been made easier,” said the author of a book on the terrorist organization IRA. Police morale has been undermined and trust in authority has been seriously weakened. Police Chief Simon Byrne resigned on Monday. But he was also under pressure because of other things.
English pointed out that the Secret Service has assessed the terrorist threat as “serious”. Accordingly, a murder is “very likely”. However, possible attacks cannot be compared to the terror campaign of the 1970s and 1980s, in which the IRA committed several attacks in England, according to the professor of politics.
Greater risk of terrorism on the Protestant side?
On the Protestant side, the terrorist groups are larger. Their main goal is to intimidate their own community. “Paramilitary groups persist, they are stronger on the loyalist side than on the Republican side, but neither set the political agenda the way they did in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said.
25 years after the end of the civil war, support for militant groups on both sides – among both Catholics and Protestant supporters of the union with Britain – has declined significantly, English explains. “Republican terrorist organizations have few active individuals and little community support,” he said. “But they are occasionally capable of deadly violence, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll disappear altogether.”
Source: Krone
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