8/3/2008: Intel News Brief: Aircraft Fly in Briton to uncover British-
Afghan Fighters:

MI5 is using a fleet of sophisticated surveillance aircraft to search
for unidentified Britons who fought alongside the Taliban in
Afghanistan.

The manhunt has been ordered because it is feared the committed and
highly trained fighters may have returned home to plot terror attacks
in the UK.

Planes with eavesdropping equipment are now flying over British cities
searching for returning Afghan fighters.

They are attempting to identify suspects using ‘voice prints’ of
fighters with British accents picked up by RAF Nimrod spy planes
monitoring Taliban battlefield radio signals.

The revelation comes after the former SAS commander in Afghanistan
yesterday confirmed that British Muslim extremists were actively
supporting Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks on British troops.

He said there was also evidence that these people were then returning
home to plot further attacks in the UK.

Brigadier Ed Butler warned: ‘There is a link between Kandahar and
urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military
understands but the British public does not.’

Whitehall sources have never officially confirmed that the three
Britten-Norman Islander aircraft based at RAF Northolt in West London
are being used for covert surveillance by MI5.

Last year it was revealed that West Midlands Police had used the
aircraft, which can monitor computer and mobile-phone communication
and long-wave radios, to track suspects connected to the plot to
kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier.

And their long-term role with the Security Service was apparently
confirmed by a photograph, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, of an MI5
surveillance officer, Steven Lanham, who died on duty in 1999, dressed
in a flying suit alongside one of the aircraft.

The Islander aircraft regularly patrol the skies over Birmingham and
Coventry, Leicester, West Yorkshire and the bordering Greater
Manchester areas, flying at between 12,000ft and 15,000ft.

Their equipment and capabilities have never been officially disclosed
but they are believed to be able to monitor mobile-phone calls. More
recently they have been fitted with equipment capable of picking up
signals from wi-fi computer networks.

‘Traffic’ intercepted by the equipment on board is analysed and
processed, probably at the GCHQ spy centre in Cheltenham, searching
for voice matches with those overheard in the Afghan war zone.

Voices heard in Afghanistan and the suspect voices in the UK are
computer-analysed looking for a match. It is understood that, in some
cases, it has been possible to determine the true identities of the
Taliban fighters from the UK.
Source: Morning Intel News Brief via Internal Company News Wire-UK
News Wire