Police conducted anti-terrorism raids in London and several towns Tuesday, arresting 13 people believed involved in preparing terrorist acts. London's Metropolitan Police said the afternoon and evening arrests were "part of a pre-planned, ongoing intelligence-led operation." The men were detained "on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," the police statement said, without elaborating. The arrests did not appear to be linked to information Pakistani authorities recently said they had uncovered about threats to Britain and America.
The police said the arrests were in northwest London, suburban Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and in Lancashire, northwestern England. The Lancashire raid was in the town of Blackburn and the Hertfordshire arrests were in Luton, police said. Detectives were searching homes in all those places in operations expected to take time to finish, police said. The suspects, who are all in their 20s and 30s, will be brought to a central London police station for questioning by anti-terrorism officers, police said. They declined to specify the men's nationalities, but the British Broadcasting Corp. said they were all of South Asian descent and some were thought to be British citizens. "Today's operation is part of continuing and extensive inquiries by police and the security service into alleged international terrorism," the police statement said. Gardiner reports British authorities have released few details about the men arrested.
Police suggested the raids were not linked to the terror threats disclosed by American authorities Sunday to financial industry buildings in New York, Washington D.C., and Newark, N.J. Pakistan's information minister said Monday his country found plans for new attacks against the United States and Britain on a computer seized during the arrest last month of a senior al-Qaida suspect wanted for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa. Asked whether the Tuesday raids were linked to the recent Pakistani discovery, police declined to answer directly, but noted that the investigation leading to the arrests had been underway for some time. |