Two Muslim converts were arrested in East London yesterday on suspicion of plotting an attack against the London Olympic canoeing venue. The arrests were said to be based on a tip-off after men were seen behaving suspiciously close to the venue in Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire on Monday. Local police officers began combing the banks after three men were seen in a dinghy on the River Lea.
A friend of the arrested men named the younger man as Jamal ud-Din and said the older man was someone he knew only as "Zakariya."
Mizanur Rahman said the arrests "might have had something to do with the fact that they recently went canoeing" on a branch of the River Lea, which runs through the Olympic site in east London.
"It's just people trying to get into the Olympic spirit," he said, but he believed the authorities would try "painting it as jihad training."