Free Republic

AS LEADERS of Britain's Muslims appealed to Prime Minister Tony Blair to reduce tensions after last week's terror alert, a former London police chief has inflamed the debate by blaming Muslims for terrorist networks in the country. "When will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem?" wrote Lord Stevens, former commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, in an opinion column for the News of the World. In their open letter to Mr Blair on Saturday, Muslim leaders urged him to alter his political stance on the Middle East, which they...

AT LEAST 400 Al-Qaeda terrorist suspects — double the previous estimates — are at large in Britain, according to police and MI5. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, has said the figure could be as high as 600 if all those thought to have returned from combat training in camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere are included. The new assessment — effectively a “terror audit” of Britain — was confirmed this weekend by one of Britain’s most senior police officers, who warned that shortages of trained surveillance teams were undermining attempts to monitor all the suspects. “With about 400...