Posted on 06/02/2006 3:24:43 PM PDT by Dog
A DESPERATE search is under way for a “chemical vest” that a British suicide bomber was ready to deploy in a terror attack on London. Police fear that the strike, using a home-made chemical device, was imminent after an informant told MI5 that he had seen the lethal garment at the home of two young men.
Last night detectives were at the hospital bedside of a 23-year-old postal worker shot during a raid on his parents’ home, while his younger brother, aged 20, was being questioned at Paddington Green high security police station.
Armed officers who led the assault on the terraced house in Forest Gate, East London, wore oxygen masks and protective chemical gear after a tip-off from MI5 that the device had already been assembled.
However, security chiefs are deeply concerned that there was no sign of the vest inside what they believe is a chemical bomb factory.
No weapons were found either as officers searched the two adjoining properties that have been converted to accommodate a large Bangladeshi family.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch, said that the pre-dawn raid, codenamed Operation Volga, was ordered in response to “specific intelligence”.
He said that there had been no time to conduct further surveillance, which suggests that the police believed a terrorist was close to launching an attack. The fear is that if chemicals were to be used then a likely target could be a train compartment on the London Underground.
Another theory is that a suicide attacker, wearing the vest under a shirt, could trigger the device in a crowded venue, such as a bar full of people watching an England World Cup match.
It is understood that the main target in yesterday’s raid was the postal worker, who was hit in the shoulder by a single shot fired by a police marksman.
His injuries are not life threatening and he remains under armed guard at the Royal London Hospital.
Scientific experts had to delay their intensive search of the house in Lansdown Road while officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission moved into the property to begin their investigation into the shooting.
After the bungled inquiry into the shooting of the Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was mistaken for a suicide bomber a day after a failed terror attack last July, Scotland Yard chiefs are mindful of the sensitivities surrounding such an incident and want to ensure procedures are followed.Scientists are expected to remain at the property for up to a week searching for any trace of chemicals that have been used in a device.
More than 250 officers were used in the operation, which was the biggest seen in Britain this year. As well as police it involved MI5 agents and bio-chemical experts from the Health Protection Agency.
Such was the operation’s importance that Tony Blair, who has been in Italy, was informed of the raid on Thursday night.John Reid, the Home Secretary, was woken soon after the shooting. He went to Scotland Yard to be briefed by senior officers and met John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, in Downing Street. After the operation, friends of the wounded man staged a demonstration outside the hospital where he is being treated. They claimed that the police had made a mistake.
One said: “Going into someone’s house and shooting them in front of their mum, that’s not right is it? Just because they have got a beard doesn’t mean to say you can shoot them.”
Another friend said that after the September 11 attacks on America the older brother had started taking his religion more seriously, growing a beard and praying five times a day. “When we were younger he was no angel. But he changed, we all just grew up. He chose to go on the right path.
“He prayed five times a day, he went to the gym every day and other than that he stayed at home.
“Every time he spoke he would say peaceful things. He would give advice to everybody.
“Out of all our crew he was one of the good ones, working and looking after his family.”
A 24-year-old man, who declined to be named, said that he was a “distant cousin” of the victim.
He said that before becoming a van driver for the Royal Mail his friend had previously worked for the supermarket chain Tesco. He said that they had attended a gym together and that the injured man was a keen motorcyclist who owned an R6 Yamaha bike.
He added that the younger brother also worked at Tesco after being introduced to the company by his older brother.
Speaking about the family, he said that they lived in a “civilised” home and often welcomed visitors.
He added that the brothers had three sisters, one of whom lived next door.
Speaking about the man who was shot, he said: “He went to the gym, he also worked out at home. He’s more homely rather than going out. Ever since I’ve known him he’s been religious.”
Be EXTRA careful when you go out in the next few days..
It's been about 20 or 30 years in the making. The question is, are we going to "multiculture" ourself to this point too?
Follow up to this mornings raid...
Christian converts go out and work in leper colonies or feed homeless folk; Muslims converts or new enthusiasts go out and start trying to kill their fellow citizens. 'Nuff said?
A couple of guys in a flat in London can manufacture chemical weapons.
But Sodom couldn't have. Nope. It was all based on lies, that whole WMD thing that Bush used to get us into war with Iraq.
We chatted about this earlier today...it looks like whatever this "chemical suicide vest" is...has been moved.
Well, there is that chemical bomb suicide vest thingy...folks are liable to get upset over every little thing...
What kind of chemical are we talking about...wouldn't the blast from the explosion neutralize the effects of an agent.
We're screwed only if we start accepting Muslims at the same rate Europe has. Sadly enough, however, it's much easier for a Muslim to get into this country legally than for Mexicans to enter legally. Go and look at the website for the DHS (which now controls immigration) and you will see that Muslims or at any rate, people from the Middle East, can participate in the lottery with virtually no effort.
English-speaking Europeans are completely excluded (along, I believe, with Aussies). Our immigration system is seriously flawed, but not the way most anti-Hispanics on this site think it is. Prohibit Muslim immigration to the US. Give me Mexicans any day.
A chemical vest would be a new weapon with particular application to an enclosed environment like a subway.
I guess it depends on what the chemical is, but I'm not sure they would be more effective than the traditional explosive vests.
But there's no way to spin this as a good development.
Yep....this just took it up several notches.
But what kind of chemical could survive the initial explosion..
I wonder why it was named this? Are they expecting a river attack (perhaps a ferry?) or did the information perhaps come from Russia?
-perhaps there will be no explosion, just a release of chemicals.......
Some of the cyanide compounds might. They're pretty easy to cook up, too.
Why would they codename a police operation...there is more here.
Sarin would right...didn't the Japanese cult set off bombs with sarin?
A lot of them could. They've been put in artillery rounds since WW I.
The explosion here doesn't have to be any bigger than to release a cloud. The explosion itself probably wouldn't be fatal to the bomber.
Initially.
I thought 'going postal' was an American phenomena.
No, that was released by aerosol devices. Sarin wouldn't be easy to cook up at home, either. BTW, one reason that there were so few deaths in the Japanese incident is that a train conductor with unbelievable guts picked one of the things up while it was emitting gas and tossed it into a locker. He died.
I agree. Definitely more.
I don't know if you've been following the stories about the cutback in anti-terrorism funds for NYC and the increase for other less "important" cities, but (while NYC is squawking), they said that this was based on threat assessment. At the moment, there are apparently more threats to interior US cities.
In other words, there is a considerable amount of data analysis going on, hopefully worldwide, and I doubt that the British raid is an isolated "police action."
Excellent!!! We are talking about a religion here, not a culture. Fundamentalist, violent Muslims come in many cultural variations -- Arab, Mongol, Indonesian, British, American (the Washington sniper least we forget), Indian, African, etc.. Plain old "multiculturalism" does not incite murder, Islam does that.
Ricin: Depending on the route of exposure (such as injection or inhalation), as little as 500 micrograms of ricin could be enough to kill an adult. A 500-microgram dose of ricin would be about the size of the head of a pin. A greater amount would likely be needed to kill people if the ricin were swallowed.
It's an Al Queda favorite.
My math is only average, but I figure if 19 Muslims can slaugther 3,000 Americans in one hour, then I figure that if only one percent of the five million medieval Mohamedans living in our midst today are terrorists, that would amount to 50,000 jihadists, just waiting for Osamma to give the orders. They could unleash enough terror attacks to send America back to the 19th century, and cause enough American deaths to make the Civil War look like a Girl Scout party.
The only thing that makes me feel comfortable about these five million koran-imals living here with us is that the President believes they are members of "one of the great religions of the world", and are "a religion of peace". So as the mosques continue to be built around America, the muslim population continues to grow, and the Islamic 'call to prayer' is blaired over loud speakers in more and more of our cities, I know I can sleep in peace, because the President says I can. /sarcasm off
I knew it was something special when I read about 150 law enforcement personnel deployed for the raid on one house (two punks).
Coop I've read it was 200 to 250 cops.
Meaning there were ~150 people in it.
Fire that 'marskman'.
L
Plastic bags filled with the poison in liquid form. Punctured on the floor of subway cars.
Rather than a chemical weapon in the traditional sense, it could mean that the shrapnel was coated/mixed with something particularly nasty.
cause enough American deaths to make the Civil War look like a Girl Scout party.
Something to keep in mind is that as a percentage of population the number of killed in the Civil war would
today be some where around 4 or 5 million.
Unfortunately, I think they could easily do that. I made my statement on the basis that only one-percent of the five million islamofacists living here could be terrorists, but personally I believe it could be much higher. Also, consider that today we often have tens of thousands of citizens all congregated in one place, at sporting events, sky skyscrapers, etc, and look what just 19 of those pigs did on 9/11.
In any case, during the Civil War you had to shoot a man to kill him, and he was armed and shot back so it wasn't easy. But the scumbag mooselimb terrorists don't fight against armed men, they like to massacre unarmed civilians congregating in busy places. They can easily kill many civilians by poisening water supplies, using chemical warfare, bio-warfare like Anthrax. They have access to small but highly effective plastics explosives, they can drive trucks laden with propane or gasoline into busy downtown areas. They could blow up LNG tankers near busy ports, and God forbid, they can obtain a 'dirty nuke', or even a few suitcase nukes. It's a whole different ballgame today, and I'll personally never trust our muslim population.
I doubt there's anything there to be found. Not chemicals, vests, timers, or any other odd devices.
These fellows are just pulling Blair's chain, and doing it very well.
MI5 will end up as the fool in this episode, shown to be chasing after shadows. The entire exercise will be judged as farce. And those real foreign agents will laugh long over their spoof, as it will cause much furor against the state.
After which you'll get blown up again and blame Tony Blair and MI5 for not being on top of things...
THis is something that disturbs me. I live in an area with virtually no Muslims, but there are little mosques springing up all over, even in very rural areas. In addition, I was in Houston a couple of weeks ago and saw that the Muslims had bought a large, imposing (Classical columns, etc.) courthouse downtown and turned it into an "Islamic Dawa (conversion) Center," according to the banner hanging over the front.
This is being paid for by Saudi and Gulf money. They are simply putting the infrastructure in place for their takeover.
Similar incidents throughout the country...I think you're on the mark.
Oh, World Cup.....great....
Didnt Berlin have a huge stabbing last weekend?
America is open to invasion and takeover because our leaders are blind; they refuse to see our enemies as dangerous and insist on forcing multi-culturalism down our throats. As Bush calls us 'vigilantes' for wanting border protection, and 'racists' for not wanting Muslims to operate our ports, and insists that Islamofacists are really just members of a "religion of peace", what chance of survival do we have? If a father is too weak and cowardly to protect his own home from an intruder, the wife and children have a real problem on their hands.
Chemical vest ping.........
So it was so urgent that the raid was quickly mounted and with considerable numbers of officers but a search of the premises takes second place to the investigation into the non-fatal shooting. Strange priorities.
They want to have a talk with the target afterwards.
Just found this thread, Ping me if you here more buddy
Who knows? The Brits come up with some funky names for their ops. Remember the SAS raid on Princes' Gate? It was called Operation Nimrod.
Some newspapers, citing unnamed security sources, said police believed suspected militants had made a "dirty" chemical device -- a conventional bomb surrounded by toxic material that could be set off by a bomber wearing a suicide jacket.
"We are absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion," one source told the Sun newspaper.
Dog, I can EASILY and with NO chance of being noticed obtain chemicals which could easily be lethal when inhaled in a closed space and dispersed actively by an associated bomb. So could you. These would not be as effective as Sarin, etc., but believe me even Democrats would take notice.
No way to eliminate these chemicals. They're not the problem... the people using them have to be the focus.
"A couple of guys in a flat in London can manufacture chemical weapons. But Sodom couldn't have. Nope. It was all based on lies, that whole WMD thing that Bush used to get us into war with Iraq."
LOL! I love it! :)
When you wear a heavy coat in weather that doesn't require it, right after a terror attack and run when police tell you to stop.....what else should one reasonably expect?
Oh, and there ARE ways to make this perps little brother talk. I hope the Brits are applying them liberally..
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