British intelligence 'misjudged' Bali terror threat: Lawmakers
British intelligence 'misjudged' Bali terror threat: Lawmakers
Ben Perry, Agence France-Presse, London
Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, was guilty of
"serious misjudgment" when warning of terror threats to British
nationals in Indonesia ahead of the Bali bomb blasts, a report by
British lawmakers released on Wednesday said.
The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee report
said MI5 failed to upgrade its threat assessment for Indonesia
despite receiving information a month before the bombings that
British and U.S. interests there were possible targets for terror
attacks.
As a result, travel advice issued by the Foreign Office was
not updated and "did not accurately reflect the threat" to
British tourists, the report said.
More than 190 people, including 26 British nationals, died in
the Oct. 12 blasts on two Bali nightclubs packed with Western
tourists.
Committee chair Ann Taylor, a lawmaker for the ruling Labour
party, told parliament that "the committee did not lightly reach
its conclusion that there was a serious misjudgment in terms of
the threat assessment that was made for Bali".
The committee's report stressed that there was no intelligence
available to Britain or any of its allies that could have
prevented the attack.
Despite receiving intelligence about possible terror attacks
in Indonesia, MI5 concluded on Oct. 9, three days before the
resort island blasts, that there was no need to upgrade its
threat assessment of the region.
"A threat existed to Western tourists in Indonesia -- the
largest concentration of Western tourists there is on Bali -- and
they gather in large numbers in a limited number of nightclubs,"
the committee's report said.
"These facts should have been recognized by the security
service as pointing to a potential target. This was a serious
misjudgment and meant that the security service did not assess
the threat correctly and, therefore, raise the level of threat,"
it added.
Responding to the committee's findings, Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw told parliament that MI5 had already launched a review of
its threat assessments.
"The tragic lesson from Bali is that British nationals are the
targets of terrorism in many parts of the world," Straw said.
"The message for the government is that we must all exercise
constant vigilance if we are to avert future such tragedies."
Relatives of British victims expressed shock at the committee's
findings.
Tobias Ellwood, who lost his brother Jon, 39, said: "Our
family are still coming to terms with it all, however we are very
upset to hear that the threat level had not been increased.
"We understand the intelligence service could not have
prevented the bomb, but had they passed on these warnings
properly my brother would be alive today because he just would
not have gone to Bali," he added.
The Jamaah Islamiyah regional terror network is widely accused
of staging the Bali bombing.
Separately, the Australian government said on Thursday that
the final Australian death toll from the Bali bombings was 88 and
all of the victims had now been identified.
"As of last night, all the known Australian victims of the
attack in Bali have now been identified," Prime Minister John
Howard told parliament.
"Eighty eight Australians have died as a result of this
terrible tragedy." Howard said 81 Australians died in Bali, six
in Australia and one in Singapore.
In all, the bomb attacks in the Balinese capital of Denpasar
killed more than 190 people and Howard said many Australian
forensic experts would remain on the Indonesian resort island to
help identify non-Australian victims.