It appears that the Jihadist plot to derail high speed trains in Central Europe may be much wider than it first seemed when I wrote about it on the 28^th March. According to UK press reports two more suspects in this plot have been picked up in the Czech Republic. The pair, an Iraqi man and a woman, were stopped at Vaclav Havel Airport after they were made subject to an international arrest warrant.

The Daily Mail said:

They are suspected of having fastened a steel cable across the tracks which run between Munich and Nuremberg which damaged the front window of a train in October last year.  

Reinforced wooden wedges had also been placed on the track in the hope of derailing one of the trains.

It came months before a similar attack when an overhead electrical line was sabotaged in December, but luckily nobody was injured in either incident. 

But Vienna prosecutors said that only a technical error prevented casualties and added that writings in Arabic and an Islamic State flag near the crime scenes established a suspected ‘terrorist’ motive.

As this story develops it begins to look more and more likely that this is quite a wide ranging and serious plot to cause mass deaths on Central European trains. It’s also now blindingly obvious that this is a plot inspired by Islam and one that is to be carried out by Muslims in the name of Islam.

What’s worrying me in particular about this story are two things. Firstly, and this didn’t seem to come out in the earlier accounts that I saw, is the fact that that this gang were partially successful in damaging trains in motion and railway infrastructure. The incident with the steel cable could have caused a great number of deaths and injuries had it not been for some chance occurrence that meant there was only minimal damage to the train.

The second aspect of this case that causes me concern is the question of what if those arrested are not the only jihad loving Muslims plotting similar attacks elsewhere in Europe? It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this could be the case. It is unlikely to be the case that a novel example of a terrorist tactic will only be used or be considered only by one group of jihadist Muslims. After all we have as an example the case of Islamic vehicular attacks which started out being a major problem in Israel but has been a tactic that has been exported to the extremist Muslims of Europe.

It is almost impossible for me to accept that those arrested in connection with this central Europe train plot are alone or that such Islamic terrorists are not merely operating in this part of the continent. There is the possibility that similar Islamic terrorists are operating in other parts of Europe as well, including the United Kingdom. I shudder to think of the sort of death, damage and destruction that a small group of violent Muslims could do to the British railway network, in addition to the massive economic disruption such an attack would cause. With over 20,000 miles of track on the British railway network and many cities such as London and Manchester for example, highly reliant on their rail infrastructure, Britain is especially vulnerable to this type of attack. A track blocking attack on the East Coast Main Line or the Eurostar line from the Channel Tunnel could, as well as potentially causing mass deaths, would also damage those parts of the country that see their rail service disrupted. Jihadis targeting the rail network doesn’t even have to involve track blocking, strategic destruction by Jihadis of trackside and maintenance infrastructure on something like the main commuter lines into London would afflict millions of travellers and cost millions of pounds. Vandalism and crime against railway infrastructure, including cable theft, is already a problem and even these ‘one off’ acquisitive or vandalistic crimes cause immense destruction, imagine if you will the extra problems that a co-ordinated group of jihadis carrying out multiple attacks would do?

This Central European train jihad plot has revealed a massive and significant potential vulnerability in a particular bit of vital infrastructure and it is one that should be engaging the minds of those tasked with protecting the people of the nations of Europe. I believe that it is only by sheer luck that mass deaths have not been caused by the Jihadi savages that have been arrested so far, however we can’t rely on luck forever to stop similar plots. Governments, security services, train operators and the public need to treat this threat as a serious one and do everything that they can to secure railway infrastructure from this form of attack.