Terror Threat Forces England Out of Badminton Tournament

The England team has withdrawn from the World Badminton Championships in India because of “a specific terrorist threat” against the tournament.

The eight-strong squad, which includes the Olympic silver medallist Nathan Robertson, pulled out of the event, which starts tomorrow in Hyderabad, after a reported threat by the Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The tournament’s organisers said they were disappointed by the decision of the England team, which was also accused by its Scottish counterpart of over-reacting.

Thomas Lund of the Badminton World Federation said: “It’s unfortunate that the English team made their decision before we had had an opportunity to properly brief the team management.”

Anne Smillie, chief executive of Badminton Scotland, which said its players will stay, told the BBC the English players would have to live with the knowledge that they have pulled out of a major world event. Welsh Badminton has three players at the tournament.

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Terrorists Targeted England Hot Spots

With terror attacks planned for as early as this symbolic four-day Easter holiday weekend in England, Muslim terrorists who used student visas to enter the country had identified crowded shopping malls and nightclubs as likely targets as they sought to maximize casualties, according to counter-terrorism sources.

Police are continuing to search 10 properties across the north-west of England in connection with an alleged planned terror bomb attack.

They have found pictures of popular Manchester shopping centres and a nightclub, the BBC has learned.

Twelve men – 11 of them Pakistani, and most of them students – are still being questioned over the alleged plot.

Gordon Brown and Pakistan’s president are “committed to working together” to combat terror, says Downing Street.

Although the police previously insisted there was no intelligence pointing to any specific targets, sources have told the BBC photographs of four popular Manchester locations were recovered during searches.

These were the Arndale and Trafford Centre shopping complexes, Birdcage nightclub and St Ann’s Square.

On Thursday, security staff at the Trafford Centre and officials at Manchester Arndale said they had not been informed of any threat.

An Arndale spokesman said: “Both Manchester Arndale and the The Birdcage will be operating as normal over the Easter weekend.”

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Al-Qaeda Terror Plot To Bomb Easter Shoppers Broken Up – UK

An al-Qaeda cell was days away from carrying out an “Easter spectacular” of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on shopping centres in Manchester, police believe.

Sources told The Daily Telegraph that the arrests of 12 men in the north west of England on Wednesday were linked to a suspected plan to launch a devastating attack this weekend.

Some of the suspects were watched by MI5 agents as they filmed themselves outside the Trafford Centre on the edge of Manchester, the Arndale Centre in the city centre, and the nearby St Ann’s Square.

Police were forced to round up the alleged plotters after they were overheard discussing dates, understood to include the Easter bank holiday, one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

“It could have been the next few days and they were talking about 10 days at the outside,” one source said. “We had to act.” Police are now engaged in a search for an alleged bomb factory, where explosives might have been assembled.

If such a plot was carried out, it would almost certainly have been Britain’s worst terrorist attack, with the potential to cause more deaths than the suicide attacks of July 7, 2005, when 52 people were murdered.

A plan to arrest the suspects in a series of co-ordinated raids yesterday morning had to be hastily brought forward to Wednesday afternoon after the country’s most senior anti-terrorism officer, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, of the Metropolitan Police, was photographed going into Downing Street carrying a briefing paper with top secret details of Operation Pathway in full view.

Yesterday morning, Mr Quick resigned after he was told by the Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, that he had lost her confidence and that of MI5.

As a result of his blunder, hundreds of police officers had to be scrambled to arrest the suspects, who were being monitored round the clock.

Former police chiefs pointed out that rounding up suspected suicide bombers in public places in Liverpool, Manchester and Clitheroe, Lancs, had put other people at risk and could also have compromised the operation.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, described the alleged plot as “very big” and said investigators were looking at links with Pakistan.

Mr Brown said: “We know that there are links between terrorists in Britain and terrorists in Pakistan. That is an important issue for us to follow through and that’s why I will be talking to President Zardari about what Pakistan can do to help us in the future.”

All but one of the men arrested were Pakistani nationals who came to Britain on student visas. This suggested a possible new tactic by al-Qaeda, which had previously used British-based extremists who travelled to Pakistan for training.

The issue of student visas represents a potential security nightmare for the police and MI5. There are 330,000 foreign students in Britain and around 10,000 such visas are issued every year to Pakistanis alone.

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Five Held Under Terror Laws Ahead of G20 Summit

Police arrested five people under anti-terror legislation in Devon, but they insisted on Monday there was no immediate link to the Group of 20 summit this week in London.

The five were detained and held over the last three days after police raids in Plymouth, while officers uncovered a number of weapons, suspicious devices and extremist materials, said Devon and Cornwall Police. Read more

Police Identify 200 Children As Potential Terrorists – UK

Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are “vulnerable” to Islamic radicalisation.

The number was revealed to The Independent by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and Britain’s most senior officer in charge of terror prevention.

He said the “Channel project” had intervened in the cases of at least 200 children who were thought to be at risk of extremism, since it began 18 months ago. The number has leapt from 10 children identified by June 2008.

The programme, run by the Association of Chief Police Officers, asks teachers, parents and other community figures to be vigilant for signs that may indicate an attraction to extreme views or susceptibility to being “groomed” by radicalisers. Sir Norman, whose force covers the area in which all four 7 July 2005 bombers grew up, said: “What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards ‘the West’.

“One of the four bombers of 7 July was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society.

“But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In his exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qa’ida. That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child’s family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man.”

The Channel project was originally piloted in Lancashire and the Metropolitan Police borough of Lambeth in 2007, but in February last year it was extended to West Yorkshire, the Midlands, Bedfordshire and South Wales. Due to its success there are now plans to roll it out to the rest of London, Thames Valley, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and West Sussex.
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