Posted on 08/10/2006 9:05:12 AM PDT by Pokey78
Pakistani intelligence agencies helped the British authorities foil the terror plot to blow up aircraft travelling between Britain and America, highly placed sources in Pakistan said today.
The agencies have been working closely with British anti-terror police in monitoring the activities of the suspected terrorists for some time, many of whom have links with Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups, The Times has learnt.
Today Pakistani security forces put Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, leader of the outlawed Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, (LeT) under house arrest. The largest of the separatist groups fighting the Indian forces in Kashmir, the LeT has also been blamed by Indian authorities for last month's train bombings in Bombay which killed more than 200 people.
Throughout the night and early morning police carried out a series of raids in London, Buckinghamshire and Birmingham, arresting 21 people.
Three of the properties were in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and earlier this afternoon police extended their cordon around one of the homes, a three-bedroom semi-detached ex-council, and then evacuated people from nine homes in the street.
A spokeswoman from Scotland Yard said: "We have evacuated a small number of houses in High Wycombe as a precautionary measure."
Locals said that the family that had lived at the targeted home for the past 15-years included three sons and two daughters.
Neighbours said two of the brothers, who are both married, still live at the house with their wives, but a third brother no longer lives there.
Former friends said that the men used to be well known in the area but had not been seen very much in recent years.
Philip Redfern said: "They are very quiet, they keep themselves to themselves which is very strange because this is a very tight community.
"They were a few years older than me but we were in the same school.
"They used to go out and play football with us in the park when they were about 18 or 19; as time went on and we got a bit older we went our separate ways."
At another address in the area residents woke to find dozens of officers swarming outside their houses.
One man woke to find police had sealed off one of his neighbours’ homes. He said: "We’ve got loads of police over the road. My wife was going out to work and she said: ‘There’s loads of police out there.’ They’ve sealed off the house."
Two properties in Walthamstow, east London were also raided.
Residents said that at 10.30pm last night they saw around twenty officers burst into a rundown three-storey building that is believed to contain three flats.
John Weir, 50, who lives opposite the terraced house said plainclothed officers in unmarked cars lined up silently opposite the house before the raid at about 10.30pm.
He said: "About 11.50pm two vans came up the road and parked at either end of the street. Then about 20 officers, four of them were in uniform, ran up and bashed the door in.
"None of them had weapons on them although they weren’t local police. I know that because our local police station is just up the road and it wasn’t the officers from there. They did everything very quietly."
Mr Weir said that officers headed upstairs to a first floor flat, which they proceeded to search by torchlight.
He said: "The only light they turned on were the ones just inside the front door. When they went upstairs they didn’t turn any lights on and you could see the torches flashing as they started their search. They were swarming all over the place.
"There must have been forensic officers there because I saw them taking tool boxes and lots of equipment in."
However, Mr Weir said he did not see police take anyone out of the house or remove any property.
He said the flat involved had been sold about a month ago.
"It was sold overnight. One day it was up for sale and the next it was gone. I think two men moved in the following weekend. No furniture was moved or anything, it was really strange."
According to Land Registry Records, the flat was sold for £138,000 in a cash deal in July this year.
Mr Weir said he believed two north African men had been living in the flat for about a month. He said: "They were in their mid-thirties. They were dressed quite normally in T-shirts and trousers. I haven’t seen them in the last couple of weeks. There is not often anyone there at that house."
Mr Weir said he originally thought police were carrying out a drugs raid as the property had been searched for cannabis about three years ago.
This afternoon uniformed police officers were still guarding the front and back entrances to the property.
Damage to the front door where police had rammed it open could be clearly seen.
Police also raided a second house in the area early this morning. A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "All we know is that the police came last night and they told us that one young man was arrested. When they did the raid it must have been very quiet because no one heard anything."
The neighbour said he believed a young man was living at the terraced property at the time of last night’s raid.
He said: "I think there was a man in his 20s living there, maybe with his family, who converted to the Muslim faith a while ago. But I couldn’t tell if that was the same person as was arrested."
A uniformed police officer guarded the property while forensic officers carried out a finger-tip search today.
Do you have an article link to Whack Job talking about August 22nd? I must of missed it. :(
Good to know at least part of Pakistani intelligence is actually on our side.
(Of course, one might charitably believe that the Pakistani intelligence service's support of the Taliban was a miscalculation, and the results were 'blowback' from an operation gone awry. Or, then again, one might not.)
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