Concern for terror plots continues, officials say
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British and U.S. officials warned Saturday against complacency after the arrest of suspects in the plot to blow up passenger jets bound for the United States and said the search continues for more people who might have been involved.
“No one should be under any illusion that the threat ended with the recent arrests. It didn’t. The threat, as well as our efforts, is ongoing,” British Home Secretary John Reid said.
One U.S. intelligence official said that in addition to looking for more suspects, authorities were investigating whether a similar, parallel plot might have been in the works.
The U.S. official also confirmed that an alleged plotter in Pakistan sent word to conspirators in Britain, urging them to launch their attacks as soon as possible, apparently after one person was detained in Pakistan.
Law enforcement authorities continued their search for links among 23 detainees, many of them British natives of Pakistani origin, and at least 11 others, including the brother of one of the suspects.
All are suspected of participating in a plot, allegedly nearing its final days, to smuggle liquid explosives on board U.S.-bound airliners operating out of Heathrow. The Times of London reported Saturday that police were looking at possible links between the detainees and the perpetrators of a series of coordinated bombings on the London transport system in July 2005 that killed 56, including the four bombers.
With no new arrests and few revelations about the plot, criticism in Britain began focusing Saturday on Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Middle East policy. Muslim leaders singled out the British government’s occupation of Iraq and Blair’s refusal to call for an immediate end to the killing in Lebanon.
In an open letter to several newspapers, the leaders of much of Britain’s establishment Muslim community, including six lawmakers, said British foreign policy is “putting civilians at increased risk, both in the U.K. and abroad,” and said the government should focus less on domestic anti-terrorism laws and more on reorienting its policy in the Middle East.
While emphasizing that “attacking civilians is never justified,” the letter said that “the debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.”
