British security tactics proved ineffective, outdated: official

Britain's intelligence services have long utilized tactics that have proved "ineffective," with a series of security failures showing a "worrying pattern," the country's former shadow Home Secretary David Davis has said.

"One of the results of this policy is that it leaves known terrorists both to carry out evil deeds and to recruit more conspirators. As a result, the problem on the street grows progressively larger," Davis wrote on Saturday's edition of the Guardian newspaper.

He said it was "extraordinary" that Mohammed Emwazi, the masked "Jihadi John" who was pictured in a number of videos released by the Islamic State (IS) showing beheadings of western hostages, "escaped the attentions of the security services."

Mohammed Emwazi, a university-educated Briton from west London, was believed to have been known by British intelligence services before he fled to Syria and joined the IS.

"These failures are part of a worrying pattern," Davis said, citing similar cases in connection with the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the 7/7 London bombings in 2015, and the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris this year.

"Given the numbers who appear to have slipped through the net, it is legitimate to ask: how many more people must die before we start to look more closely at the strategy of our intelligence services?" said Davis, who is now a member of the British Parliament.

"The problem is not new. The fact is that the intelligence services have long utilised tactics that have proved ineffective," he noted.

In the article, Davis defended the U.S. security strategy as a "much better method", which allows the Americans "to pursue, convict and imprison those who endanger the public."

"Unfortunately, for a variety of institutional reasons Britain has never been quite so robust in its counter-terrorism policies," he lamented.

"The time has come to learn from the pattern of failures across the globe and apply the appropriate lessons: namely that we need to prosecute, convict and imprison terrorists, and that all our policies should be bent firmly towards that end," the former shadow home secretary urged. Enditem