British authorities thwart terrorist plot

2006-08-11

A terrorist plot to blow up aeroplanes travelling between Britain and the United States was stymied by British authorities after reportedly being tipped off by a British Muslim. British Muslims expressed shock at the plot and praised the police for alerting them to the situation.

[Getty Images] The plot involved terrorists smuggling seemingly innocuous liquids in drink bottles

British authorities have thwarted one of the most serious terror plots since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States.

The plot involved terrorists smuggling seemingly innocuous liquids in drink bottles aboard planes for assembling into bombs and then detonating an explosion with an iPod or mobile phone.

British police have arrested 24 people believed days away from attempting explode up to ten aeroplanes en route from Britain to the United States. Most of the identified individuals are Muslims of Pakistani origin, and were aged between 17 and 35, according to the Bank of England, which froze the accounts of all suspects. Women accounted for two of arrests.

The plot was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale," London's Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson told CNN on Thursday (10 August).

The terrorist operation reached a "critical point" on Wednesday night, prompting "urgent action" by British authorities, Deputy Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the London police's anti-terror branch, said Thursday. Britain and the United States raised their threat levels to the maximum causing severe delays at British airports and forcing many airlines to cancel flights.

According to the Washington Post, a member of Britain's Muslim community tipped off British intelligence about the suspicious activities of an acquaintance shortly after the July 2005 terrorist bombings in London's transit system. The tip led to a co-ordinated effort involving British, American and Pakistani intelligence.

AFP quoted a senior Pakistani government official as saying that two Britons of Pakistani origins were arrested last week in the southern city of Karachi and another in the eastern city of Lahore.

The pair, the official said, "were key members of the Britain-based network of militants. Pakistan arrested a total of seven individuals in connection with the plot prior to Thursday's arrests in London. The suspects were "in full knowledge of the plot to blow up the airlines, and the information was passed on to British and US intelligence," the official told AFP.

Khurshid Ahmed, a member of the Commission for Racial Equality in Birmingham, where some of the other arrests took place, told BBC Radio 4's "The World at One", "The [Muslim] response here is one of shock that we still find young people actively involved in activities which we would condemn as a society and also a sense of relief that a possible attack has been thwarted."

Ahmed praised British authorities for alerting him to the situation before acting so he could explain to the community what was happening.

Many British newspapers on Friday congratulated the authorities for foiling the terrorist plot, and called on the government and people to react proportionally.

"Even the worst acts of terrorism reap their largest toll in hysterical responses," the Financial Times said in an editorial. "The most powerful answer to terrorism is not to be terrified," it added.

A Daily Telegraph editorial argued that winning over disaffected Muslim youth has to start at home. "Only Muslim families can stop this infamy…The long march to win back disaffected Muslim youth must start in the home, and the neighbourhoods of which they are a part," it said.

"It has to start at the bottom, with a recognition that fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and the extended family are the people most likely to spot, and most able to stop, emerging radicalism," the editorial added.