Ho hum. Getting almost commonplace, isn't it? And that's what's scarier than anything...the way this sort of thing has become normal. Hardly raises an eyebrow anymore.
British Police arrested 14 people in and around London suspected of trying to train and recruit others for terrorist attacks, and another two up in Manchester.
None of these arrests were linked to the plot last month to bomb 10 trans-Atlantic jets or to the July 2005 suicide bombings on London's transit network..this was a whole different group of jihad warriors.
The arrests apparently followed months of surveillance and investigation. Among the sites being searched following the arrests was the Jameah Islamiyah Secondary School near Crowborough, 40 miles south of London.
Ah, poor Sussex.
A spokeswoman for the Sussex Police said searches at the Jameah Islamiyah school would continue for days and possibly weeks.
The school is well...interesting. It's fairly large, and situated on the grounds of a former convent (how's that for irony), but has only nine pupils, ages 12 to 15, according to a 2005 report by the Office for Standards in Education. It also reportedly operates as a `retreat' for Muslim families on weekends.
I imagine that the weekend
Convicted terrorist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri (you know, ol' hook hand) was one of the people who reportedly brought a group of followers to the school for one of those weekend `retreats'.
And the London Sunday Times reported that one of the properties raided by the police was the London home of al-Masri's former spokeshole, Abu Abdullah.
The two arrests in Manchester came early today in the Cheetham Hill area.
Those arrests were part of the same investigation that led to the Aug. 23 arrest of a terror suspect who is still being held but who hasn't been identified yet. The two arrests were of relatives of that man, according to the police.
Afzal Khan, the former lord mayor of Manchester and now a race relations adviser, said the outlawed radical group Al-Muhajiroun had been recruiting members in the area.
He also claimed that local mosques had excluded members of the group from preaching jihad and fundraising...but apparently either these Muslims (and Mr. Khan) neglected to report these people to the police or they did, and the police simply chose to ignore them rather than be dubbed as rascists and Islamaphobes and sued. Take your pick.
"This community stood up to extreme elements long before" Prime Minister Tony Blair in a news conference. " But there are still these unsavory elements operating here."
Peter Clarke, head of Metropolitan Police anti-terror efforts, said the threat from homegrown terrorism was increasing in Britain.
"What we've learned since 9/11 is that the threat is not something that's simply coming from overseas into the United Kingdom," he told the BBC in an interview.
"What we've learned, and what we've seen all too graphically and all too murderously, is that we have a threat which is being generated here within the United Kingdom."
Yes indeed, cousins.
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