Britain’s security services are paying Muslims up to £2000 each in order to spy on their co-religionists, according to new information revealed in the Guardian today.
MI5 is paying informants across the country to spy on specific targets, including individuals and mosques, in order to avert home grown terrorism.
One source reported: “It’s been driven by the [intelligence] agencies, it’s a network of human resources across the country engaged to effectively spy on specific targets. It’s decent money.”
And the news has attracted criticism, with some claiming that the offer of money could lead to corrupt information. Of course, the head of the East London Mosque, a particularly well-known haunt for Islamic extremists, cautioned against the strategy.
Salman Farsi said: “We want our national security protected but, as with everything, there needs to be due scrutiny and we need to ensure things are done properly.
“If there’s money on the table, where’s the scrutiny or the oversight to ensure whether someone has not just come up with some fabricated information? Money can corrupt.”
The news comes as it was revealed that the British Security Services are tracking more than 3,000 home-grown jihadists in Britain.
In recent weeks, coinciding with the European migrant crisis, and the announcement that the Prime Minister will take 20,000 new Syrian migrants into the country over the next few years, the government has drip-fed out more and more information about how it is trying to counter the terrorist threat to Britain.
Some however, have argued that the push to war in Syria again may well see Britain taking part in another ground war that will attract negative attention from those with an axe to grind against the Western world.
Already, European security services and police have found asylum seekers and migrants to be sympathetic to radical Islam, with Islamist extremists recruiting the new migrants upon their arrival in Europe.