MAIL ONLINE: So here we go again. Another international Islamic terrorist plot - and yet another British connection.
The attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an American plane was averted only by luck and courage.
The incident obviously raises alarming questions about gross lapses in security. In particular, how did Abdulmutallab obtain a U.S. visa when he had been on an American watch-list of people with known terrorist connections?
But the deeper and more urgent issue for Britain concerns the key role this country has once again played in a Muslim's trajectory to radicalisation and terror. Abdulmutallab, who claims to have been working for Al Qaeda, was an engineering student at prestigious University College London for three years until 2008.
He was actually refused an entry visa to Britain earlier this year, but only because the institution at which he said he wanted to study turned out to be non-existent.
How, people might well ask, could such a radical have been educated in Britain without the authorities jumping on him?
Did MI5 know anything about him - especially since he was on a U.S. terrorism watch-list for two years?
As yet, we still don't know much about this man's history.
It appears he became a religiously extreme Muslim at a school in Togo, but was further radicalised while studying in London before apparently going to Yemen and linking to Al Qaeda.
Who can be surprised? After all, this is ' Londonistan' - the contemptuous term coined by the French security service back in the Nineties as they watched Britain become the central hub of Islamic terrorism in Europe.
Radicals flocked to the UK, attracted by Britain's toxic combination of criminally lax immigration controls, generous health, education and welfare benefits and the ability to perpetuate their views through the British veneration of the principle of free speech. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, December 28, 2009
