Posted on 08/10/2006 3:00:54 AM PDT by HAL9000
Police statement on airline bombing plot
LONDON (Reuters) - Following is the full text of a statement issued by London Deputy Commissioner, Paul Stephenson on Thursday morning:
"We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder.
The Commissioner has been fully briefed and he is at New Scotland Yard today. He and I want to pay tribute to officers from the Met's Anti-Terrorist Branch and the security services for the work they have undertaken to disrupt these activities.
We believe that the terrorists' aim was to smuggle explosives onto airplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight.
We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the UK to the USA.
Overnight we have arrested 21 people. The majority of those arrests have been in London but we have also made arrests in Thames Valley and Birmingham. We are currently searching a number of addresses.
We are grateful to our colleagues in other force areas for their support.
As the operation got under way we spoke to community leaders to make them aware that a major anti-terrorist operation was taking place but without giving specific details about locations. This extensive dialogue will continue throughout the operation.
We would like to reassure the public that this operation was carried out with public safety upper most in our minds. This is a major operation, which will inevitably be lengthy and complex. The UK is now at the highest possible level of alert.
We will consider the threat in its wider sense and take whatever action is necessary to protect people in London and throughout the country.
Measures have already been put in place to restrict hand luggage taken onto aircraft. This will inevitably cause significant delay and we ask people to remain calm, patient and vigilant at this very difficult time.
Put simply this was a plot to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
Well, although some must fly, many others can rearrange their lives and businesses to avoid the need. American tourists - see America first by car. American business persons - teleconference, Business skills upgrade training - distance learning. Not everything, but so many things can be reordered to avoid the need for flying.
On another note, the requirement that all battery powered devices, such as laptops, cameras, ipods, etc., will result in a huge jump in thefts from luggage.
I wonder if they would be used to melt some sort of solid to a liquid which could be used some how in a bomb in a liquid form. Do the planes have any 120volt outlets. Maybe they could mix a substance in with another substance and then hide the whole thing in some computer, head phones, etc. go back to the bathroom heat it up and kaboom, blow the whole plane up. You could hide a cream substance in practically any thing if you could form the substance in to shapes.
oh my mind is running wild now, hey you could strip the plug off of a hair dryer, strip the wires bare and then stick the wires in any type of outlet that would provide power, the wires heat up and kaboom, the substance would be in the hairdryer.
and lets hope we are not using any method of interrogation that could be construed as torture. Particularly as this is an ongoing terror plot and the arrested may have info that would save thousands if lives.
No sir! /sarc
The hair dryer would be in the carry on luggage.
No. Not even when the bombs land on their fool heads. It will always be Bush's fault, America's fault, the Republican's fault, the Jews' fault, the Christians' fault. These people are simply hopeless. I fear for our country and our lives if they EVER get back into power.
The `rats don`t want phone calls monitored because they are afraid they will be caught planning with Al-Qaeda. What other reason is there?
Some will, most won't. Delusional ideas are known to be almost impossible to change.
Was she the stewardess? I know we had a thread about that on FR.
Vimto! It's the real thing. (not Coca Cola whatever they may say).
Yes. By airport "security personell".
You may not be a 17-40 yo muslim male, but you might be married to one. And you might be either a witting or unwitting accomplice. We need to search EVERYONE
Gov. Romney (MA) calling National Guard to screen passengers.
Oh, sorry, bit of a coughing fit there.
I read DU regularly. Some of them have the ability to write intelligently. But the majority of them, I have come to think, simply hate America. And many of them are not American, although they do not reveal that fact. You can sometimes see their written language degenerate as they get angry and realize that English is not their first language. These people are not really responding to issues. They are trying to destabilize the US. They take whatever is in the news and development an argument about why it is the US/bush's fault. There is nothing rational about that dialogue. It has nothing to do with real dialogue. It's anonymous undermining of the US. Not all of them are like that. The honest DUers don't seem to realize the degree to which they have been hijacked.
AMEN and AMEN
When the time comes to start engaging the enemy in direct combat, start with him.
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