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21 arrested as police find suspect
device(Birmingham UK)
Birmingham(UK) Post ^ | 7/11/05 | Campbell Docherty and Neil Connor

Posted on 07/11/2005 4:36:53 AM PDT by Dane

21 arrested as police find suspect device

Jul 11 2005

By Campbell Docherty and Neil Connor

People were evacuated from their homes last night after West
Midlands Police found a suspect device during raids which resulted in
21 arrests.

Farm Road, in Rowley Regis, Sandwell, and neighbouring streets were
sealed off as a bomb disposal team dealt with the suspect package,
which was discovered to be a black box containing a stopwatch and
wires.

There was no controlled explosion and the box was taken away for
further examination. A man was arrested at the property.

Armed officers were involved in the operation in which 15 men and six
women aged 13 to 35 were detained and a firearm also recovered.

Police said it was part of a long-standing investigation into gun crime
and none of the arrests were under the Terrorism Act but senior
officers said they were keeping an open mind and investigations were
continuing.

It came less than 24 hours after Birmingham city centre was paralysed
when more than 20,000 revellers were evacuated from pubs and clubs
and four suspect devices blown up in controlled explosions. None were
found to be explosive.

Yesterday, at least two more controlled explosions were carried out in
Birmingham, in Kingstanding and Bartley Green. Again, both devices
were later deemed to be harmless.

The Rowley Regis residents were allowed to return to their properties
at 10pm, more than six hours after the initial scare. One, Paul
Fletcher, said police officers wearing breathing apparatus and carrying
machine guns had forced their way into the house.

“It looked like they used tear gas,” he said. “They went in with
Alsatians, then came out with the man’s wife and his daughter and
then brought him out in handcuffs.”

Meanwhile, as West Midlands Chief Constable Paul Scott-Lee defended
the decision to carry out a mass evacuation of Birmingham city centre
on Saturday night, a security expert raised the spectre of a second
terror group operating in Britain.

Sean McGough said there was the possibility another group, not linked
to last Thursday’s London outrage, prompted the West Midlands force
to clear pubs and clubs on the busiest night of the week.

It is believed police received specific threats which, combined with
calls from members of the public about suspicious packages, forced
them to act.

Mr Scott-Lee yesterday insisted there had been a “real and
significant” threat to lives.

“I can tell you that, bearing in mind the current world climate, the
information we received posed a real threat to the lives of people in
the city centre,” he said. “I believe this threat was significant for me
to authorise this evacuation.

“The packages were incidental to the threat we were responding to.”

Mr Scott-Lee would not go into details about the specific threat. A
security source also told The Birmingham Post Saturday night’s actions
were “a local issue” and not connected to the London bombings.

However, Mr McGough, a specialist in terrorism at Birmingham
University, said suggestions about a specific threat raised the
possibility that a group unconnected to the London bombings may be
in the region.

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