London warned of terror attacks after Pakistan raids

[tyagi]

London warned of terror attacks after Pakistan raids | theage.com.au

London warned of terror attacks after Pakistan raids




THE unprecedented raids by the US inside Pakistan could provoke terrorist attacks in London, Pakistan's high commissioner to Britain has warned.

Wajid Shamsul Hasan said the attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects were making the streets of Britain less safe and that resentment was mounting among Pakistanis in the country, with community leaders calling for that anger to be "organised".

His remarks followed outrage in Pakistan over five attacks in the past 10 days, including a ground assault in the town of Angoor Adda in which 20 people were killed. US officials said all were supporters of terrorism but Pakistan insists they were civilians, including women and children.

Mr Hasan said: "This will infuriate Muslims in this country and make the streets of London less safe. There are one million Pakistanis in the diaspora here and resentment is mounting.

"I'm being flooded by text messages from community leaders saying we must organise our anger. The Americans' trigger-happy actions will radicalise young Muslims. They're playing into the hands of the very militants we're supposed to be fighting."

A new US tactic to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistan has met with hostility within Pakistan as well. This week Pakistani tribesmen, representing half a million people, vowed to join the Taliban if Washington did not stop cross-border attacks by its forces from Afghanistan.

Reacting to American missile attacks in north Waziristan last week, which followed an unprecedented cross-border ground assault earlier this month, tribal chiefs from the area called an emergency meeting on Saturday. They warned if the attacks did not cease, they would prepare an army to attack US forces and also seek support from tribal elders in Afghanistan.

Pakistan recently completed its transition to democracy with the election as president of Asif Ali Zardari, but relations with the US are strained. US President George Bush underscored the shift in strategy last week when he said Pakistan and Afghanistan were part of the same "theatre" of anti-terrorism operations.

US and British special forces have been carrying out "special reconnaissance" operations inside Pakistan following an agreement with Pervez Musharraf, the previous president of Pakistan.

The troops have used unmanned Predator spy planes to track targets that are then attacked with Hellfire missiles.

However, tactics became more direct with the raid on Angoor Adda, a small town near the Afghan border, by three dozen heavily-armed marines and Navy Seals. It is a crossing point from Pakistan to Afghanistan inhabited by Pashtun tribes, the same ethnicity as the Taliban. It has long been believed that this is the region where Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have found refuge.

US defence officials confirmed that there was a new determination by Mr Bush to hunt down bin Laden before his presidency ends in January.

Mr Zardari arrived in Britain on Sunday and will hold talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

 

[pakomar]

What kind of terror attacks? These stories are made only to make fool the British civilians because British government wants more boots on Afghanistan.
And to also show the British people that Pakistani are terrorists and they are next in list.

 

[Cheetah786]

What kind of terror attacks? These stories are made only to make fool the British civilians because British government wants more boots on Afghanistan.
And to also show the British people that Pakistani are terrorists and they are next in list.

Al-Qaeda terror plot to bomb Easter shoppers
An al-Qaeda cell was days away from carrying out an "Easter spectacular" of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on shopping centres in Manchester, police believe.
Sources told The Daily Telegraph that the arrests of 12 men in the north west of England on Wednesday were linked to a suspected plan to launch a devastating attack this weekend.

Some of the suspects were watched by MI5 agents as they filmed themselves outside the Trafford Centre on the edge of Manchester, the Arndale Centre in the city centre, and the nearby St Ann's Square
Police were forced to round up the alleged plotters after they were overheard discussing dates, understood to include the Easter bank holiday, one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

"It could have been the next few days and they were talking about 10 days at the outside," one source said. "We had to act." Police are now engaged in a search for an alleged bomb factory, where explosives might have been assembled.

If such a plot was carried out, it would almost certainly have been Britain's worst terrorist attack, with the potential to cause more deaths than the suicide attacks of July 7, 2005, when 52 people were murdered.

A plan to arrest the suspects in a series of co-ordinated raids yesterday morning had to be hastily brought forward to Wednesday afternoon after the country's most senior anti-terrorism officer, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, of the Metropolitan Police, was photographed going into Downing Street carrying a briefing paper with top secret details of Operation Pathway in full view.

Yesterday morning, Mr Quick resigned after he was told by the Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, that he had lost her confidence and that of MI5.

As a result of his blunder, hundreds of police officers had to be scrambled to arrest the suspects, who were being monitored round the clock.

Former police chiefs pointed out that rounding up suspected suicide bombers in public places in Liverpool, Manchester and Clitheroe, Lancs, had put other people at risk and could also have compromised the operation.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, described the alleged plot as "very big" and said investigators were looking at links with Pakistan.

Mr Brown said: "We know that there are links between terrorists in Britain and terrorists in Pakistan. That is an important issue for us to follow through and that's why I will be talking to President Zardari about what Pakistan can do to help us in the future."

All but one of the men arrested were Pakistani nationals who came to Britain on student visas. This suggested a possible new tactic by al-Qaeda, which had previously used British-based extremists who travelled to Pakistan for training.

The issue of student visas represents a potential security nightmare for the police and MI5. There are 330,000 foreign students in Britain and around 10,000 such visas are issued every year to Pakistanis alone.

Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, has described the student visa system as "the major loophole in Britain's border controls".

Several of the suspects who were being questioned last night, were from the al-Qaeda heartlands in Pakistan's border area with Afghanistan.

Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester, said police had been forced to act to protect the public. Asked about al-Qaeda involvement, he added: "We know what is the nature of the threat to this country and where it comes from."

But he sought to reassure shoppers, and added: "I would like to say I would have no hesitation, or any of my family, in using any of those locations that have been mentioned."

The security services suspect that several of the men arrested were trained at religious schools in Pakistan and sent to launch suicide attacks on the West.

They were suspected to have Continued on Page 5 Continued from Page 1 chosen Easter as the most significant Christian holiday for an attack.

Police believe the suspects may have smuggled bomb-making equipment into the country and were ready to launch their attacks.

Yesterday, searches focused on a property in Highgate Street, Liverpool, although nothing "significant" had yet been found.

Sources said police had arrested the man they suspected was the ring-leader, Abid Naseer, 22, at an address in Galsworthy Avenue in Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

He is said to be from the tribal areas of Pakistan where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have established their base.

The alleged members of the cell had signed up for a range of student courses, while two were employed as security guards at a new Homebase store in Clitheroe, Lancs.

Among the locations raided on Wednesday afternoon was the Cyber Net Café in Cheetham Hill, where it is thought the men communicated using emails.

Security sources suspect they received their instructions from al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistan.

The leader of the Pakistan Taliban is Baitullah Mehsud, who last week claimed responsibility for an attack on a police compound in Lahore and promised to attack the West. At least one of the arrested men is from Mehsud's heartland of South Waziristan, sources in Pakistan said.
Al-Qaeda terror plot to bomb Easter shoppers - Telegraph

 

[Cheetah786]

Student visa link to terror raids as Gordon Brown points finger at Pakistan

Suspects being questioned today after one of the biggest anti-terror operations since the July 7 attacks exploited lax student visa regulations to enter the UK from Pakistan, Whitehall sources said yesterday.

As police continued searches in *Liverpool, Manchester and Clitheroe, Lancashire, after the raids on Wednesday, the Home Office said student visa checks had been tightened in the last fortnight because of widespread abuses of the system.

There are concerns inside government and the security services that the 11 Pakistani nationals being held in the north of England could have gained entry on student visas in order to form a sleeper cell. Gordon Brown talked of the police having foiled a "very big terrorist plot".

The operation which led to the arrest of the men, along with one Briton who is said to have roots in the same tribal area, was rushed forward after the country's top anti-terror officer carried papers under his arm detailing the raids as he walked into 10 Downing Street in full view of photographers.

Apologising for the blunder, Bob Quick, the Met's head of specialist operations, resigned from his post yesterday. His departure reignited tensions over the running of the force after London mayor Boris Johnson broke the news of the resignation on BBC Radio 4, angering the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and Scotland Yard.

Despite the gaffe, security sources said the operation was a success, describing it as an unprecedented joint action by MI5 and MI6 in light of intelligence.

One Whitehall source said the police feared attacks were planned for the Easter weekend.

They said the plot indicated al-Qaida was adopting new tactics to send "clean skins" – people not known to security services or the police – in from abroad, rather than using British-born terrorists to carry out attacks.

The prime minister said: "We are dealing with a very big terrorist plot … there were a number of people who are suspected of it who have been arrested. That police operation was successful.

"We know that there are links between terrorists in Britain and terrorists in Pakistan. That is an important issue for us to follow through and that's why I will be talking to President Zardari about what Pakistan can do to help us in the future."

Counterterrorist sources admitted that despite intensive surveillance they had uncovered no definite targets for an alleged plot, and described reports citing a shopping centre and nightclub in Manchester as targets as "wide of the mark".

Asked if this would become another high-profile raid ending with no one charged with terror offences, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Peter Fahy, said: "There will always be situations where … either we can't achieve the evidential threshold or as a result of the investigation we find that the threat was not how it appeared to us at the time."

Greater Manchester police, which was co-ordinating the anti-terror arrests, said several properties were being searched. They refused to comment on what had been found, but if the threat was as great as sources suggested, officers would have been looking for bomb-*making equipment and seizing computers to search for evidence of a cell in operation.

Police were busy at five addresses in Manchester, and on the M602 motorway.

Forensic teams removed several crates of items from a four-star B&B in Clitheroe, Brooklyn House, where the two men who were arrested at the town's new Homebase store had been staying since Monday.

Searches were also being carried out in Highgate Street, Liverpool, where five men were arrested, one from Liverpool John Moores University campus.

Muhammad Adil, a student swept up in the raids at John Moores University but released after a couple of hours, said one friend was still being held. Adil, from Peshawar, Pakistan, said his friend was an accountancy *student from Karachi. Adil had been studying in the UK for two years and met his friend at his part-time job as a security guard. "They asked me if I knew why I was being arrested – as suspect of terrorism, I was laughing at that. I've been studying for the last two years," he said.

A Home Office spokesman said that student visa regulations had been tightened so that all would-be students had to have their fingerprints checked against terror and police lists and had to be sponsored by a legitimate college or university in the UK.

Only last month, immigration *minister Phil Woolas described how "abuse of the student visa has been the biggest abuse of the system, the major loophole in Britain's border controls".

Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's high commissioner to the United Kingdom, said his country could help carry out visa checks, but was not allowed to. He said: "It is at your end you have to do something more. Every day we are arresting suspects wherever we find them."

Last year, 9,300 students entered the UK from Pakistan. British colleges now have to register with the UK Border Agency, which last month revealed it had turned down 460 of the 2,100 colleges which had applied for licences to admit international *students, because they were bogus establishments sponsoring students as part of an immigration scam.

The fact that Wednesday's arrests were made so fast after Quick inadvertently disclosed secret operational details, indicated that MI5 teams were watching their targets closely. "Things were moving anyway, executive action [arrests] wasn't far off. Quick hastened it," said one official.

Two Whitehall sources indicated the surveillance operation began a fortnight ago when a foreign intelligence agency passed information to British security services. Three days ago, the sources said, *further intelligence indicated that any attack the cell was planning was "imminent", and the decision was made to arrest the alleged network. However, that sequence of events was disputed by other sources.
Student visa link to terror raids as Gordon Brown points finger at Pakistan | UK news | guardian.co.uk