A former British spy and terrorism expert estimates there may be as many as 1,000 men in Britain capable of the same unspeakable behaviour as Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old death dreamer who blew himself up at the Manchester arena Monday and took 22 others with him. He injured as many as 60 and set equal parts of fear and anger in the hearts of decent people everywhere. The estimate is from Richard Barrett, as quoted from a BBC radio interview Tuesday. “We value our society, we talk about freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and all this sort of thing, and we really do want to preserve those values against the attacks or terrorism, and if we’re following around 1,000 people or something I think we’re losing those values,” said Barrett. “I don’t think anyone’s expecting the security services or police to monitor the population here on the scale of perhaps what was done in East Germany.” Barrett expressed his concern by the numbers, noting “returnees” from Iraq and Syria said to be 400 or so, plus the people who wanted to go to Iraq or Syria but were stopped. They could count up to 600, he said. “So already you’re up to 1,000 before you even start on the people who live here and maybe never expressed any or didn’t knowingly express any intention to go to Syria, so what do you do about that?”
