MI5 Intelligence Points to Planned Attack, Huh?

[Wokeman]

Police searches continue at East London house (Pic: PA)
Relevant News
'Chemical plot' shooting 'in error' claims relative
A man shot by anti-terrorist police during a massive raid to smash a suspected chemical plot is recovering in hospital today.

The 23-year-old was hit by a bullet in the shoulder as armed officers descended on a family terraced house in east London in the early hours of yesterday.

He was later arrested under the Terrorism Act after being treated for the gunshot wound in the Royal London Hospital, where he is still recovering.

A 20-year-old man, thought to be his brother, was also held in the raid, which involved 250 police officers, MI5 and bio-chemical experts, and is still in custody.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said there had been no developments overnight.

The Metropolitan Police's head of anti-terrorism, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, said they moved in after "very specific" intelligence pointed to a terrorist threat. Surveillance had been in place for weeks.

DAC Clarke said: "The intelligence was such that it demanded an intensive investigation and response.

"The purpose of the investigation, after ensuring public safety, is to prove or disprove the intelligence that we have received.

"This is always difficult, and sometimes the only way to do so is to mount an operation such as that which we carried out."

Detectives believe a plot was being hatched to use a chemical device in the UK.

Neighbours said they believed both the arrested men were British-born Muslims.

An air exclusion zone was in place around the house in Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, and a painstaking police search may take days. No other residents were evacuated.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission immediately launched an investigation into the shooting which will be overseen by Deborah Glass, the IPCC Commissioner for London and the South East.

Last year the watchdog was tasked with investigating the fatal shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes by police at Stockwell Tube station.

Detectives do not believe the current suspected plot had any links to the July 7 bombings in London last year.

Police vans moved into the street silently under cover of darkness so that if there were explosives in the house, there would be no time to detonate them.

Officers, some wearing bio-chemical suits and carrying gas masks, then broke a ground floor window to get in to the house.

Friends of the two arrested men who went to see him in the hospital said he had been shot in front of his parents and sisters, some of whom had to be treated for shock.

One friend said: "If you were making a bomb factory would you do it in the same house as your mother? He was not armed. He's not a terrorist. He is an innocent man and he didn't deserve to get shot.

"He was an ordinary guy working to support his family."

The friends said he worked as a postman and van driver for Royal Mail, had previously worked for Tesco and as a pizza delivery man, and owned a Yamaha superbike.

A 24-year-old relative, who asked not to be named, said: "He went to the gym, he also worked out at home. He's more homely rather than going out.

"He loves his motorbike and loves his fitness. If he's a fanatic about anything it's his fitness.

"Ever since I've known him he's been religious. He's been religious from a very young age. He is being portrayed as a Westernised person, that is not true.

"He was very close to his brother. They lived together. He got him a job in Tesco because he worked there first."

Another friend said both the arrested men had attended Rokeby School in Stratford, east London.

After the September 11 attacks the older brother started taking his religion more seriously, grew a beard and started praying five times a day, he said.

"When we were younger he was no angel. But he changed, we all just grew up. He chose to go on the right path.

"He prayed five times a day, he went to the gym every day and other than that he stayed at home.

"Every time he spoke he would say peaceful things. He would give advice to everybody.

"Out of all our crew he was one of the good ones, working and looking after his family."

Another friend said: "Going into someone's house and shooting them in front of their mum, that's not right is it?

"Just because they have got a beard doesn't mean to say you can shoot them."

Prime Minster Tony Blair, who resumed operational control of the Government yesterday after a six-day holiday in Tuscany, was made aware of the raid before it happened and Home Secretary John Reid was kept informed as the raid was underway.

Following the police operation, neighbours described seeing a man wearing a bloodstained T-shirt being carried out of the house.

One neighbour said the family who lived there were "respectable and nice people".

The area was a "mixed community" with a large number of Pakistani and Bengali families who have lived there for some time.

A relative of the man who was shot during the anti-terrorist raid said he believed his relative had done nothing wrong.

Shah Miah, 23, who lives streets away from where the major operation was carried out, said his parents had been in contact with the family of the injured man and had been told details of the incident.

Mr Miah said: "All we know is that police started to break into the house and he came running down the stairs and that's when he got shot. He was taken away along with the others.

"He's not in any way capable of doing what they say he's done."

By 7am police had reduced the size of their cordon between Green Street and Katherine Road.

Only Lansdown Road, the scene of the raid, and Rothsay Road, which has properties overlooking the rear of the raided property, remain closed.

Officers in black boiler-suits could be seen entering and leaving the raided Victorian terraced house, some carrying yellow floodlight stands.

A two-storey scaffolding tent covered in white plastic sheeting remains across the front of the house, covering the porch, path and most of the road in front.

At least a dozen police officers are manning the cordons at the ends of each of the two streets, while two ambulances and a paramedic fast-response vehicle are parked nearby.

The neighbours of the raided house said today that they "never expected" to be at the centre of a massive police operation.

The man and woman, who have two teenage children, said police offered to send them to a hotel yesterday evening "for their safety", but they chose to stay instead at a relative's house further down Lansdown Road.

The woman, who declined to be named, said her neighbours were ordinary people.

She said: "We knew them of course. But only to say hello and goodbye to. This is totally unexpected. It was a shock."

She added that she saw a large number of police officers dressed in black in the early hours of yesterday morning, but she didn't see her neighbours outside the house.

At least eight police vans full of officers arrived at the scene today to relieve their colleagues who have been searching the property through the night.

Some of the officers have been working for more than 24 hours since the raid took place yesterday morning.

Officers could be seen changing out of their rubber biological and chemical suits and other protective clothing, including gloves and overshoes, in the street outside the house.

Some of the officers were carrying cameras and people who entered the house could be signing an entrance and exit log.

Others carried portable lights as well as large canvas holdalls used to store their equipment.

A number of officers from London Fire Brigade, and two vehicles, were also at the scene this morning.

Police stopped and questioned a postman briefly before they let him deliver mail to the street, accompanied by a police officer.

[paul wright]

MI5 hatched plot
Let's be thankful that they kept their SRR boys with their multiple dum dum bullets in the back-up this time

[andyb]

Can you believe they are now saying he got shot by his brother who was tussling with the cops!!! 250 coppers and he manages to grab a loaded gun and shoot his brother. What a crock of *.

[jason67]

So our boys in blue still cant "find what they are looking for"

Hmmm....

Its funny that sky TV had none stop coverage for days when they thought that 'terrorists' were involved, but now (the story was obviously bull **it) Englands football songs are the leading headline news.

Great...

[PercyPenguin]

A subtitle to any book on all these alleged terror cases could be "MI5 - the boys who cried wolf"

Just think of all the rubbbish they (and Special branch) have pushed in the press over the years - from the ricin plot to the supposed plot to blow up Manchester United's ground.

I don't know if anyone here used to read Mohammad Al Fayed's Punch magazine, but that even had some idiot claiming that anti-monarchy protestors in Britain planned to start a campaign of suicide bombs. Heaven help us!

Then when a bomb does go off, MI5/SB are not to blame in anyway shape or form (and an enquiry would be a "diversion") and the response of the government is to give them even more money and even more resources!

You could not make it up! Trebles all round!

[Annie]

I posted this a while back, but will unblushingly post it again, as MI5 are in the news so much at the moment. I hope it's useful background info. It certainly shows how our spooks can get away with so much....

MI5 and MI6 were set up in 1909 during the build up to the 1st World War, and their remit was to uncover German spies. For the next 80 years they didn’t officially exist and operated outside the law. In 1989 MI5 was put on a legal footing for the first time when parliament passed the Security Service Act. This stated that they had to work within legal parameters, and if they wanted to do something which would otherwise be illegal, such as break into and bug someone’s house, they had to get the written permission of their political master, the Home Secretary. Without that, they were breaking the law just as you or I would be. This also means that all investigations prior to 1989 are, by definition, illegal. Perhaps we should take a class action about this to Europe?

MI6 and GCHQ were not put on a legal footing until the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, and are answerable to the Foreign Secretary. The same Act also set up the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament as a sop to democratic oversight. However, it is appointed by the PM, answerable to the PM, and the PM can vet its findings. They also have no power to call for witnesses and documents from the spooks.

When David Shayler and I were recruited by MI5 in the early 1990s, they were at great pains to explain that they worked within the law, were accountable, and their work was mainly investigating terrorism. Once we were there, this quickly proved to be untrue. They are incompetent, break the law, let bombs go off on British streets, connive at the imprisonment of innocent people, illegally bug people, lie to government (on whom they hold personal files) and indulge in false flag terrorism. This is why we left and blew the whistle.

With all this hysteria about the threat from “Al Qaeda”, and the avalanche of new powers and resources being thrown at the spooks, as well the erosion of our liberties, we need to keep a cool head. Why don’t our political “leaders” take a step back and ask what precisely are the threats facing this country, and how can we best police them?

There’s a lot of historic baggage attached to MI5 and 6, particularly after their dirty tricks against the left in the 1980s and in Ireland over the last 35 years. As they are now primarily doing a policing job against terrorism (and a damn bad job at that!) why not just clear the decks and start again? Set up a dedicated counter-terrorism agency, which is properly accountable to parliament, as the police already are and the spies are not.

As it stands we have the most secretive intelligence agencies in the western world. They are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and protected by the draconian Official Secrets Act. The OSA makes it a crime for anyone to blow the whistle on crimes committed by the spies, and there is no public interest defence. No other western democracies have spies who are quite so unaccountable or who operate so blatantly above the law. The closest analogies are probably the intelligence agencies of countries such as Libya or Iran. Particularly as we now know that MI5 and MI6 officers are conniving in extraordinary rendition and the use of torture.

So legal? Yes, in theory. Do they abide by the law? Only when it suits them. Are they ethical? Absolutely not.