Arrests continue worldwide as jihad networks are rooted out

It's probably not much consolation to those people trapped in the airports, but a number of arrests of Islamic terrorists have occurred worldwide. Perhaps we may finally be starting to get serious about fighting jihad.

In Britain, the latest update was that British police have arrested 24 people suspected of involvement in the plot..all of them are either British born Muslims or White Britishers who are what Muslims call `reverts' - converts to Islam. One of them reportedly worked at Heathrow Airport.

They ranged in age from 17 to 35 and had Muslim names.

Pakistani officials with the ISI said they had arrested five Pakistanis and two Britons in the case, including British national Rashid Rauf, arrested about a week ago and described as a "key person" with ties to al-Qaida.

"We arrested him from the (Afghanistan-Pakistan) border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain," Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao The Associated Press. The five Pakistanis were described as suspected "facilitators" of the plot.

Another 10 Pakistanis had been arrested Friday in the eastern district of Bhawalpur, 300 miles southwest of Islamabad, in connection with the plot.

British and U.S. investigators, describing a plot on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said the planners sought to use common electronic devices to detonate liquid explosives to bring down as many as 12 planes. The nasty stuff was to be concealed in sports drinks!

British Home Secretary John Reid said Britain was grateful for Pakistan's cooperation and that officials believed the main suspects were in custody. However, the threat level in the U.K. remained at "critical," the highest level.

The reality, of course,is that Britain's M15 and the CIA simply provided the Pakistani ISI with data it couldn't ignore without being complicit.

Interestingly enough,the plot appears to have been scheduled for August 16th and was discovewred by a US surveillance program on suspected Islamic terorrists

I guess we're lucky the New York Times didn't know about it or there would have been a couple of thousand more victims of jihad.

In Italy, police arrested 40 people in a security crackdown but did not link them directly to the London plot. case. The arrests were made at "Islamic gathering places" in several cities on charges of violating residency rules or committing other crimes. In other words, the Italians used this as an excuse to round up some known jihadis in their country.

Stay tuned...