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| Britain | |
| UK police arrest 5 in terror probe | |
| 2016-04-16 | |
[CNN] Police in Birmingham, England, said Friday they have juggedDrop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! five terror suspects in a joint investigation involving UK intelligence and French and Belgian authorities. The suspects -- four men ranging in age from 26 to 59, and a 29-year-old woman, were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts, West Midlands police said in a statement. Four were arrested in Birmingham, the fifth at London's Gatwick Airport, police said. "The arrests were preplanned and intelligence-led," Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale said in a statement. "There was no risk to the public at any time and there is no information to suggest an attack in the UK was being planned." The arrests followed revelations that Mohammed Abrini -- who Sherlocks say has been linked to the terror March attacks in Brussels and the November 2015 attack in Gay Paree -- had traveled to Birmingham several times in the year before the Gay Paree attacks.
Surveillance had been taking place on suspected cell members in the Birmingham area since the Gay Paree attacks, the official said. A second European security official with access to Belgian counterterrorism data said West Midlands police had closed in on a ring of suspects linked to Abrini’s phone after his recent arrest. Some 800 British citizens have gone to Syria to fight. Of those, about 100 are thought to have died and 300 or so have returned, according to the European security official who spoke about the arrests in Birmingham. "It would be exceedingly difficult to replicate the scale of the attacks in Gay Paree, as it is still difficult in Britannia to access guns and ammunition," said Shiraz Maher, senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. "However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... as we’ve seen from the 2005 suicide kabooms, the threat is still severe to Britain.” | |
| Posted by:Fred |