BIRMINGHAM, England, 1 February 2007 — Police arrested nine mostly Pakistan-origin suspects yesterday, to foil an alleged “Iraq-style” kidnap and beheading plot aimed at bringing a dreaded new form of terror to Britain.
In what officials called a “very, very major operation,” the alleged plotters were said to be planning to post a video of the execution on the Internet, as has happened to Western hostages in Iraq.
The alleged victim had already been identified by the plotters as a Muslim soldier in his 20s, who was alerted by detectives recently and given protection while police swooped in the central city of Birmingham. “It was going to be a beheading and this was going to be posted on the Internet via a homemade video,” a security source told AFP. “I think it would be somebody significant inside the Muslim community.” Eight of the arrests, the result of a six-month investigation, took place in dawn raids in parts of the city with large Muslim populations, where yellow-vested police sealed off a number of streets for much of the day.
In fast-moving events, a ninth suspect was arrested later in the day on a motorway in the Birmingham area.
Home Secretary John Reid declined to go into details about the alleged plotters, but underlined the “real and serious nature” of the terrorist threat Britain faces. The country remains on a high alert since July 2005 suicide bombings which left 56 people dead on the London transport system. But confirmation of plans to bring the kind of video beheadings seen in Iraq onto British soil would trigger a new level of alarm here.
