Militants' quick training in Pakistan poses problem to intelligence agencies

'Fast turnaround' militants are able to stay below radar before returning home to launch attacks, analysts say

Western security officials are worried about a wave of so-called "fast turnaround" volunteers who travel to Pakistan and obtain training from militant groups so quickly that they escape detection before returning to their home countries to launch attacks. Analysts say the unprecedented speed with which new militants are being accepted for training by groups such as al-Qaida poses major problems for intelligence services as such individuals are likely to stay "below the radar". The fears have been reinforced by one recent episode when, security sources say, British volunteers arrived in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, found their way to a religious school that has a reputation as a gateway to militant groups and, though they appear to have had no references, were within days participating in a training course run by al-Qaida or a linked extremist organisation in the rugged tribal zone along the frontier with Afghanistan. After only a short stay in Pakistan, the volunteers had returned to the UK. Previously volunteers would have had to travel with reliable references from individuals known and trusted by extremist groups in Pakistan and would spend weeks "in quarantine" before being accepted. Frequently they would be tested in combat or in other ways to ensure they were not spies. Richard Barrett, head of the expert committee established by the UN security council to oversee sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida, said: "People are going in for a shorter time and so are much harder to spot. They are not seeing senior people, just lower-level trainers and maybe a middle-ranking leader, so security issues [for the extremist group] are less." Barrett said some intelligence indicated that Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old gunman who killed seven people in France in March, had spent possibly less than a day with a group known as Jund al-Khalifa in Pakistan. One earlier plot cited by security officials as indicating the new "fast turnaround" trend is an al-Qaida bomb plot against the New York subway in 2009. A US court has heard how three volunteers travelled to Pakistan from the US in August 2008, hoping to enter Afghanistan and join the Taliban. Turned back at the border, they were invited by al-Qaida operatives to a compound in Waziristan, where they spent about a week listening to lectures and watching videos of al-Qaida attacks. A second week was spent at another compound learning bomb-making techniques. They then were sent home. European officials have also circulated a document found on two militants – an Austrian and a German of Turkish origin – detained in Germany last year on their return from the zones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and tried earlier this year. The document is thought to have been authored by a senior figure within al-Qaida and recommends that westerners who seek out the group should be trained quickly and sent back to their home countries as soon as possible. Almost all the most serious plots in the UK have all involved the training of volunteers in Pakistan by al-Qaida. However, the flow of extremist volunteers from the UK to Pakistan has reduced substantially in recent years. Other high-profile successful attacks in Europe, such as the Madrid bombing of 2004, have been by self-forming networks following the ideology of the group but not formally linked to it. Though the White House has said it has no "credible information" of a threat before the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden in a US special forces raid, high-profile events such as the London Olympics this summer remain a target, experts say. A recent Home Office report spoke of "a high-level threat of AQ-inspired extremism from males aged between 20 and 38" to the Olympics. "The individuals of interest to the police are predominantly British-born second and third-generation migrants from south-east Asia. There is also interest from a number of Middle Eastern political movements and AQ-affiliated groups from north Africa," the report said.