Security forces 'foil terror plot every six weeks'

By Sean Rayment, Security Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Feb. 05, 2007

Twice as many Islamist terror plots have been disrupted since the July 7 suicide bombings as has previously been made public, Britain's security services insist.

A further six plots, which have been kept secret until now for security reasons, had been planned by groups across Britain since the London Underground and bus bombings in 2005.

Whitehall sources refused to provide precise details on security grounds.

The revelation demonstrates the scale of the task facing MI5 and the police, who are now discovering or disrupting some kind of terrorist plot in the United Kingdom every six weeks. Up to 12 plots of all kinds have been discovered in the past year and a half.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, revealed last November that there were an estimated 1,600 suspected terrorist involved in at least 200 networks in Britain.

It is understood that details of the previously undisclosed plots have been kept secret because no arrests were made and many of those involved assumed that their plans had "ground to a halt" for "natural reasons", such as a failure to acquire specific material. A Whitehall source said: "It has always been the case that much of MI5's work is never made public and this is an example of that."

Details of the plots emerged just days after MI5 and anti-terrorist detectives from the West Midlands Police foiled an alleged plan to kidnap a British soldier.

Nine suspects were arrested in the Birmingham area after a joint operation involving police and MI5 officers that brought a six-month investigation to its climax. Some of those arrested are alleged to have been planning to abduct and behead a young British Muslim soldier recently returned from Afghanistan. It is also alleged that his would-be murderers planned to post a video recording of his death on the internet.

Police said 18 addresses had been raided during Operation Gamble, the investigation into the alleged abduction plot, and that a "significant quantity" of exhibits had been taken away for examination.

Detectives are continuing to question the nine men arrested. Eight of the suspects were picked up in a series of dawn raids on Wednesday; the ninth was stopped on a motorway in the city several hours later. The nine suspects, eight British men of Pakistani descent and one Pakistani, have been detained on suspicion of the commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism.

Officials investigating the alleged abduction have criticised some media coverage of the case, which claimed that a number of soldiers had volunteered to act as "tethered goats" in an effort to expose the alleged Islamist plotters and that there were "25 Muslim soldiers" on a terrorist hit list. Both claims have been dismissed by security sources.

The alleged abduction presents the Ministry of Defence with a series of problems on what personal security advice should be issued to the 350 Muslim servicemen and women in the Armed Forces. During the conflict in Northern Ireland all military personnel were warned of the potential dangers when off-duty. Troops were told to check private vehicles for booby traps, to vary their routes to and from work and, in some cases, not to wear uniform outside military establishments.

The Ministry of Defence has refused to comment on whether such measures would be revived following the latest developments.

It has also emerged that as many as four of those in custody are believed to have recently returned from a trip to Pakistan, giving rise to the belief that the plot may have been ordered by al-Qaeda, the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani officials have given warning that with up to 400,000 Britons travelling to their country every year, the majority of those to visit family and friends, the monitoring of every terrorist suspect is impossible. British-born terrorist recruits, using valid passports, can easily pass through security checkpoints when they enter Pakistan. Because most travellers have family links, few are questioned.

Once inside the country they are free to travel to the belt of territory along the border with Afghanistan, where hardline Muslim clerics preach the need for jihad against the West at some of the more radical madrassas, or Islamic schools. They also find it straightforward to attend one of the al-Qaeda terrorist training camps known to operate in the region.












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