LONDON - The questions being raised on Thursday after the brutal killing of an off-duty soldier on a London street echoed many of the questions raised after the Boston marathon bombing just five weeks before. Were the suspects “lone wolves†or part of a wider conspiracy? Were they radicalized Islamists or disaffected locals? Were they motivated by events overseas or mouthing the rhetoric of someone else's fight?
Two suspects were hospitalized under guard after being shot by police officers in the denouement of Wednesday's attack in the Woolwich district, which was captured by bystanders on their cellphones. (The Lede blog links to the video).
After the unnamed soldier was hacked to death, one of the suspects told a 48-year-old woman who tried to reason with him, “We want to start a war in London tonight.â€
One counterterrorism expert suggested to Britain's ITV that the suspects could have been aping the April 15 marathon bombings in Boston .
“It may be that this is a copycat after the Boston bombings,†said Richard Barrett, a former coordinator for the United Nations Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team. “That two individuals could cause a lot of mayhem is maybe more of an inspiration than attacking soldiers.â€
As in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, the suspected authors of the Boston attack, investigators want to determine whether the Woolwich killers were acting alone or whether they took their orders from a terrorist group.
And, if they were “lone wolves,†how far had they been indoctrinated by purveyors of extremist Islamist philosophy?
The Telegraph said Wednesday's attack was “straight out of Al Qaeda's terror manual.â€
Tom Whitehead, the newspaper's security reporter, said Britain faced a new generation of Islamic extremists who were virtually impossible to detect.
“They are self-starting fanatics who have radicalized themselves over the Internet and while many may be inspired by Al Qaeda they do not need any command or control from the terror group,†he wrote.
The suspects have yet to be identified. Both were black and the one who addressed bystanders - and can be seen in the videos and tabloid front pages that have spread around the world - spoke with a London accent.
That raised the possibility that, as in the case of the Americanized Tsarnaev brothers, the attack was the work of disaffected homegrown killers rather than foreign terrorist plotters.
It would not be a first for Britain. Four bombers who killed 52 people in attacks on the London transport system on July 7, 2005, were all British-born.
Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber†who is serving a life sentence in the United States for a failed 2001 attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic passenger flight, was a Londoner who went to high school in the same borough where Wednesday's killing took place.
In 2007, investigators foiled a plot by a Birmingham man who wanted to emulate jihadists in Iraq by beheading a soldier on camera before circulating the film online.
As Muslim organizations joined politicians in denouncing the killing, Mayor Boris Johnson of London told the BBC that neither Islam nor British foreign policy was to blame. The crime was the responsibility of “the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it.â€
If the perpetrators wanted to provoke a race or religious war by their unprovoked attack in a multicultural corner of London, all they have started so far is a lackluster skirmish.
A hundred or so supporters of the far-right English Defense League clashed with police after rallying at a Woolwich pub but were soon dispersed. Nick Raynsford, the local member of Parliament, said they should “go home and grow up.â€
Otherwise Londoners appeared to be following the “keep calm and carry on†injunction from politicians, who praised the coolheadedness of bystanders at Wednesday's attack.
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday, “One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives.â€
