I would like to believe that this near miss will awaken the people of Britain - but I think we can all picture the editorial in the Mirror and the Guardian – “America should withdraw their embassies from Europe as they pose a threat to the safety of the nation blah blah blah...”
Only to the extent that they demand the US Embassy be closed so there are no Muslim targets on their precious soil.
Excerpts from OEB's link:
- a newspaper reported police had already questioned him since September 11 after he visited Saudi Arabia- Swedish security services had interviewed Chatty about possible contacts with radical Muslim groups after he returned from Saudi Arabia where he had been studying Islam.
- A highly-placed intelligence source said police were hunting four more men, including an explosives expert, who were believed to have worked on the plan with the suspect.
- A source in Sweden's Sapo security police said Sapo had been told by the government to play the latest incident down at a politically sensitive time, two weeks before an election.
- James Lamb, assistant chief flight instructor with the North American Institute of Aviation in Conway, South Carolina, said an FBI agent was at the school on Saturday seeking information on Kerim Chatty, a former student who attended the school from September 1996 to April 1997. Lamb said Chatty had been "terminated" for poor performance and lack of progress.
- Another Sapo source told Reuters the security police were working on the theory that the group were planning to crash at least one plane, and possibly more, into a U.S. embassy. They did not know which embassy had been targeted.
- Swedish police do not believe the arrested man or anyone he was working with were part of bin Laden's al Qaeda guerrilla group. Instead they believe a copycat attack was being planned.
- Swedish papers said the suspect had become a devout Muslim in recent years, regularly visiting a mosque in Stockholm. It quoted his friends as saying he had often spoken of fighting for Islam but was not a member of any organisation
- His father was quoted by Aftonbladet as saying the suspect had made two trips to Saudi Arabia to study Islam and was there when the September 11 suicide attacks took place. His latest visit was in February this year.
Either the Swedes don't want to upset the royals, or we've asked them to go easy...
Ask yourself this question whenever you want to ask whether or not it would affect Guardian readers - would it affect people who read the Washington Post and listen to NPR?
Regards, Ivan