"British Official Calls Terror Threat 'Very Substantial'"

Sunday, August 13, 2006

British Official Calls Terror Threat 'Very Substantial' 
By ALAN COWELL
The New York (NY) Times


LONDON, - Britain's highest-ranking law enforcement official said Sunday
that the threat of a terrorist attack here remained "very substantial,'' and
he disclosed that about two dozen major terrorist conspiracies were under
investigation.

"There are still people out there who would carry out such attacks,'' the
official, Home Secretary John Reid, said, "The threat of a terrorist attack
in the U.K. is still very substantial.''

Four days after the British authorities announced that they had disrupted a
plot to use liquid explosives to bomb up to 10 American-bound passenger
jets, Britain was still on its highest level of alert, its airports in
pandemonium because of heightened security measures.

In early morning raids last Thursday, the police rounded up 24 suspects and
later freed one of them, leaving 23 in custody under counterterrorism laws
permitting 28-day detention without charge. Of those, 22 were being
questioned on Sunday while the status of the 23rd awaited a court ruling on
Monday. In a BBC interview, Mr. Reid did not give details of any of the
other conspiracies, but echoed earlier police assessments that British
authorities had foiled four other plots since the London bombings on July 7,
2005. 

The bombings brought Britons up short against the bloody reality of Islamic
terrorism, made all the more chilling by the fact that the attacks then -
like the suspects now - were mainly British-born Muslims. But the figure of
24 continuing investigations into other plots - far higher than had
previously been made known - seemed bound to alarm many people whose lives
have already been reshaped by new security regimes and what Prime Minister
Tony Blair has called an ''elemental'' battle with radical Islam.

At Heathrow airport, Europe's busiest, airlines canceled almost one third of
their flights on Sunday after a chaotic day on Saturday when many flights
were canceled and some left half-empty because passengers were stuck in
security lines awaiting body searches. Around 500 people spent the night
camped out at the airport and, as torrential downpours drenched marquees
erected as makeshift waiting areas on Sunday, attendants handed out pink,
blue and transparent plastic hooded raincovers to keep passengers dry. 

"It's good they found the people," said Verena Trommen, a 26-year-old German
traveler, referring to the arrested suspects. "But this is just so hard.'' 

Sobbing as she spoke to a reporter, she said she had arrived from Vancouver,
Canada, and was trying to get home to Munich but her flight had been
canceled and she would spend the night at Heathrow. "It's a very bad end to
a holiday,'' she said. "It feels just like the war. It's like a really bad
movie.'' 

One airline boss, Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of the low-cost
carrier Ryanair, said the government "by insisting on these heavy-handed
security measures is allowing the extremists to achieve many of their
objectives.''

Apparently seeking to bolster official denials of a link between terrorism
and Britain's alliance with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr.
Reid said it was now known that Al Qaeda first tried to attack a British
target in 2000. "So this has been a long-going threat but it is a chronic
one and it is a severe one,'' he said.

"We now think in retrospect that the first Al Qaeda plot, for instance,
against this country preceded by quite awhile our intervention in Iraq and
Afghanistan and actually preceded 9/11,'' he said. 

The remark seemed to be an indirect confirmation, for the first time, that
the government saw the hand of Al Qaeda in the latest conspiracy, echoing
stronger assertions by Pakistani officials.

Mr. Reid did not give details about the purported conspiracy in 2000 beyond
saying it was uncovered in Birmingham, Britain's second city which figured
in the latest wave of arrests. One man seized there, Tayib Rauf, was said to
be the brother of Rashid Rauf, a man captured by police in Pakistan whose
arrest reportedly set off last week's round-up of suspects.

Asked about a report in the British Sunday newspaper The Observer that
police were hunting "two dozen'' terror cells in Britain, Mr. Reid said:
"I'm not going to confirm an exact number but I wouldn't deny that that
would indicate the number of major conspiracies that we are trying to look
at. There would be more which are not at the center of our considerations
and there may be more that we don't know about at all.''

He also appeared to suggest that some conspirators associated with the plot
disclosed last week may still be at large. "We believe it was a major, major
plot,'' he said, describing the police investigation as "ongoing.''

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