UK Drops Terror Alert Level To Lowest Level In 2 Years

Britain’s government reduced its terror alert level Monday to its lowest level since the July 7, 2005 bombings of the London transport system but warned that the threat remains serious.

The government did not explain its decision to downgrade the threat from “severe,” which Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 describes on its Web site as a “high likelihood” of future terror attacks” to “substantial,” which means that such an attack remains a “strong possibility.”

Terror experts were divided on the thinking that lay behind the change.

Bob Ayers, a London-based former U.S. intelligence officer, said officials may have reduced the threat level in an effort to show that the war in Afghanistan — where British soldiers are engaged in an increasingly bloody fight with Taliban rebels — is helping keep the country safe from extremists. But he said the move sat uneasily with dire warnings voiced last year that British security services were tracking 2,000 people and dozens of suspected terrorist plots.

“Where did they go? Have they just disappeared?” Ayers asked.

via The Associated Press: UK drops terror alert level to lowest in 2 years.

UK – Bomb Seizures Spark Far-right Terror Plot Fear

A network of suspected far-right extremists with access to 300 weapons and 80 bombs has been uncovered by counter-terrorism detectives.

Thirty-two people have been questioned in a police operation that raises the prospect of a right-wing bombing campaign against mosques. Police are said to have recovered a British National party membership card and other right-wing literature during a raid on the home of one suspect charged under the Terrorism Act.

In England’s largest seizure of a suspected terrorist arsenal since the IRA mainland bombings of the early 1990s, rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms have been recovered in the past six weeks during raids on more than 20 properties. Several people have been charged and more arrests are imminent. Current police activity is linked to arrests in Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

Police are examining allegations that many of the guns were manufactured or reactivated, then sold over the internet to viewers of a right-wing website. Details of the previously secret operation were disclosed by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire, to security officials.

via Source