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Britain
Staking out suburbia - why police moved quickly after a long watch
2004-03-31
EFL, follow-up.
Even as Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner faced television cameras and reporters in London last week to warn that a major terrorist attack on the capital was "inevitable" he knew his officers were working frantically to prevent just such an atrocity taking place. For weeks, MI5 agents and counter-terrorist police had been secretly watching the comings and goings at a nondescript rented-out industrial storage unit on Boston Road in Hanwell, west London. With the assistance of the Pakistani security services, they had also infiltrated a group of suspects and were monitoring their homes in London and the surrounding commuter belt. The lengthy, covert surveillance and the involvement of another country made UK security chiefs jittery. At Scotland Yard and Whitehall, they debated when to strike. Too soon and they risked jeopardising everything, too late and the consequences did not bear thinking about.

On Monday night, the final preparations were being put in place for one of the biggest and most complex counter-terrorist operations ever executed in the UK. In the early hours of yesterday morning, 700 police officers from five forces - the Met, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex and Thames Valley - plus MI5, moved stealthily into position along streets in slumbering suburbs. None of the officers was armed - a security source said intelligence suggested guns would not be needed. The suspects were not expected to have weapons or to resist arrest. Just before 6am, police went to 24 addresses, mostly residential - but a few commercial premises too - in Uxbridge, Ilford and Colindale in London, and in Crawley, West Sussex, and Slough, Luton and Horley in the home counties. Many of the houses, in unremarkable terrace streets and quiet cul-de-sacs, belong to ordinary families, who have lived there for years. Most were not even awake before officers had bundled the eight suspects, the youngest of whom is 17, six others aged 18 to 22 and one 32-year-old, into waiting vehicles. They were taken to London's most secure police station, Paddington Green, where they will be subjected to intensive interrogation. All are British citizens of Pakistani origin.

The arrests have sent shockwaves through the Muslim community. It has suffered a huge upsurge of racist attacks since September 11 and now is bracing itself for another backlash. In Crawley neighbours of the arrested men complained that the raids were sure to increase anti-Muslim feeling. "It's taken effect straight away. People are already giving you looks as if they think you must be up to something," said Taseer Hussain, 19, from Langley Green."It's shocking. I am of Pakistani origin myself, like the guys who were arrested. I work for an airline company at Gatwick. People look at me as if I'm a suspect."
Taseer, there's a way to fix this -- make damned sure that you're a loyal British citizen and are seen as such.
The three young men arrested in Crawley live in neat, modest, red-brick terraces within walking distance of each other. Blue and white police tape was stretched across each driveway yesterday as officers stood guard outside. At Lime Close, the scene of another raid, one resident asked: "That family have lived here more than 12 years and seem like nice people. I can't believe they would be involved."
"He was such a quiet man."
Peter Clarke, the Met's anti-terrorist chief, was at pains to reassure Islamic leaders that the police knew the vast majority of Muslims were law-abiding citizens who utterly rejected terrorist violence. The young ages of most of those detained have raised concerns that others may have escaped capture, and there could be further arrests in the next few weeks. But security chiefs are convinced they have smashed a terrorist "spectacular", which could have cost hundreds of lives. The mood in the corridors of Scotland Yard and MI5 last night was one of "quiet jubilation". But with al-Qaida's determination, ingenuity and ever-shifting networks, they know only too well that complacency is the last thing they can afford.
Outstanding work.
Posted by:Dan Darling & Steve White

#15   Jews lied to President Bush about WMD and now they say that he lied. BTW, Rantburg is a Zionist propaganda BBS that censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of Jewish lies.

MR. Pruitt, censorship of truth puts American blood on your hands -- we'll make sure that America "never forgets".
Posted by: Free Speech Enforcer TROLL   2004-03-31 7:19:47 AM  

#14  Thank you TT for such an intelligent, well-written post.

No guns? Seriously? Hope OldeForce is right. Otherwise, that would be kind of stupid.

So many Moslems are whiners--whine, whine, whine, whine. They really whine a lot. And when they're not whining, they're complaining (subset of whining). Anybody got any ideas why they're that way? They whine and the lib Brits and Americans say "sorry--please forgive us for the horrible things we've done to you . . . we're really nice people. Please don't say we're unfair to you. Please. " Whine. Sorry. Whine. Sorry. Whine. Sorry. It's like a teeter-totter.
Posted by: ex-lib   2004-03-31 9:08:07 PM  

#13  That's it BAR! Ya gotta have faith.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-03-31 5:47:57 PM  

#12  Or maybe the Pom authorities were sure that their policy of prohibiting firearm ownership by the public insured that no one had any guns. (including criminals)
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-03-31 4:22:56 PM  

#11  The "no guns" policy was probably because of the fact that there were 5 different police units involved - more chance of blowing away another cop than of hitting a bad guy. Back-up was probably loaded for bear.
Posted by: OldeForce   2004-03-31 3:05:50 PM  

#10  None of the officers was armed - a security source said intelligence suggested guns would not be needed. The suspects were not expected to have weapons or to resist arrest.

What if they were wrong? What if one of the terrorists had reached for a grenade? The British brass clearly assign a low value on the lives of their men.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2004-03-31 12:50:26 PM  

#9  
the youngest of whom is 17, six others aged 18 to 22 and one 32-year-old

This is another example of Moslem terrorists duping their own society's teenagers into suicidal terrorist acts.

Posted by: Mike Sylwester   2004-03-31 9:10:18 AM  

#8  Quote from today's edition of the London Metro - [free mass-circulation daily newspaper]:

"The cab driver father of one of the three (3 related suspects) last night defended his son as a devout muslim adding: 'That is no reason to lock him up"

No, but building a large f*ck off bomb with the intent of mass murder is.
When do you think they'll get it? Never methinks.
Posted by: Howard UK   2004-03-31 5:36:09 AM  

#7  TT, it was well said.
While we had a few isolated incidents of violence against Muslims here in the US after 9/11, for the most part, there have been none, even given our righteous outrage about the attacks and against the radical Muslims who were clearly the perpetrators.
Yet the Muslim community has whined for the last 2 and 1/2 years about "dirty looks."
Learn to ignore them--British people are polite and tolerant almost to a fault.
There are killers among you and I know you're smart enough to ferret them out from their other true peace-loving, more moderate Muslim "brothers."
(Radical) Islam has both religious and political aims: to bring about world jihad so that Islam rules everywhere on earth.
Infidels or kuffir are either to be killed or at best, made into 2nd class citizens who pay "protection money" to their Muslim masters.
A shar'ia government and caliphate is to be established and any other governmental system is to be abolished.
To the true Muslim believers, democracy is a "heresy."
This is what you're dealing with.
And make no mistake, they have learned, while living in the West, to use all the mechanisms of Liberalism to work in their favor to accomplish their own ends, like whining about police harrassment, mistreatment at Gitmo, and non-existent instances of the "backlash" against them by the non-Muslim public.
Posted by: Jen   2004-03-31 5:22:54 AM  

#6  I would say that it is not the raids who will increase anti-Muslim feeling but the actions of those Muslims.

If they think those guys were bad guys it would be time for the mytical moderate Muslims to hunt them and send their heads to the nearest police station. If they think they are good guys then they are enemy and, for those who a British passport, traitors. That implies, jail and deport the foreigners, hang the traitors.
Posted by: JFM   2004-03-31 4:50:44 AM  

#5  Well said T_T. Wish I wasn't at work so I could post my detailed feelings on this matter. We certainly have a massive problem in the UK and I have the feeling that we're about to become a lot less sentimental about our 'guests'. We should use this operation as an excuse to lock-up the entire Al Muhajiroun squad and other similar organisations. The consequent protests from the Muslim community would probably be enormous, but f*ck it - we'd at least know really how keen they were to distance themselves from the extremists.
Posted by: Howard UK   2004-03-31 4:20:36 AM  

#4  None of the cops were armed? They got off easy this time. The hard boyz will be ready for them next time.
Posted by: Seafarious   2004-03-31 4:14:33 AM  

#3  I watched BBC news this morning and the same thing happened. They go on and on about reassuring the Muslim Leaders and the the Muslim community, the vast majority of whom are peaceful loyal citizens blah blah blah....

I understand they don't want people rioting and blaming, even attacking innocent people. For all we know, this case was cracked with the help of loyal Muslim infaltrators or informers.

Still, these endless platitudes from the media and officials are too much to stomach. It's way past time to get angry at the people who are planning and committing the terror and the ones who give them support - logistical and, more importantly, ideological. Plus the ones who excuse and apologize for them because they share small pieces of their worldview ("Er, I don't want Sharia, but I totally oppose Bush's policies and I can see why they'd be angry and desperate...") That's the real problem: Ideology (Islamic Jihad and Western Transnational Progressivism).

The Islamic world is infected and they wont rid themselves of this infection until they reject everything the terrorists stand for. Sheltered, affluent Westerners with Liberal and Progressive mindsets don't realize that in their rush to protect the rest of the Islamic community from backlash, they allow blame to be deflected away from the Islamoids and onto the 'knuckle-dragging, racist Britons.' And now the discussion turns away from what is wrong in the Islamic community and what they desperately need to do to correct it, towards what has Britain done wrong (a lot, nobody is perfect) and what can Britain do to put things right. Eventually, they totally obscure the fact that a bunch of Koran-waving bastards was plotting to commit an atrocity like the ones in Madrid and 100 other locations. We forget the vile criminals and their inhuman intentions, sinking into a morass of relativism.

When that guy from the article, Taseer, complains about the looks of suspicion he's getting, it sure seems like he's more outraged about the peoples' suspicions (a natural and expected human response - at least Britons are mostly civilized and there no mobs with torches and pitchforks) than he is that so many of his co-religionists are committing the horrific acts that bring down the suspicion upon him.

As long as this reaction prevails, the Islamic community will be able to continue delaying their internal crisis (crises). They can continue nursing their precious grievances and offended sensibilities. They can continue to view themselves as righteous and the West as villainous - as if Muslims were the only victims of injustice and all of their problems the fault of outsiders. The crisis of terrorism will continue growing as long as these attitudes persist. These attitudes will continue to flourish as long as paternalistic leftist-ideological elitists excuse it. And as the terrorism crisis grows, the greater the chances of a day of terrible reckoning - the horrific attack (and, we should remind the lefties and multicultural fetishists at the BBC, the horrific backlash). With the persistence of these mindsets, we, and they are in serious trouble. The Europeans are in even bigger trouble.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro   2004-03-31 3:42:14 AM  

#2  ....reassure Islamic leaders that the police knew the vast majority of Muslims were law-abiding citizens who utterly rejected terrorist violence.

Ex-lib, I'm with you. Is this guy,Peter Clarke, kidding about utterly rejecting terrorist violence? When did that utter rejection take place? I don't remember reading or hearing that. Chine
Posted by: Chiner   2004-03-31 2:09:44 AM  

#1  That's simply terrific! Hope they get the rest of 'em.

OF COURSE people are going to look differently at Muslims now. The "nice" guy next door could be planning your funeral! It sure would help if the so-called "good guy" Muslims would speak out, en masse, against the bad guy Muslims. They certainly have time to make comments on how "badly" they're being treated now by non-Muslims, but so far, nary a word in condemnation of AQ--at least not that I've heard.
Posted by: ex-lib   2004-03-31 1:32:04 AM  

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