UK terror plot: links to 7/​7?

The pace of report­ing on the UK ter­ror plot has slowed down some­what in the last 24 hours, but there have been a num­ber of inter­est­ing devel­op­ments today:
1. The Times of London reports today on poten­tial links between this plot and the July 7, 2005 tran­sit attacks in London:

.…Scotland Yard is inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble links between the men arrested on Thursday and other British ter­ror­ists, includ­ing the July 7 bombers. They are con­cerned that some of those now in cus­tody vis­ited Pakistan last year at the same time as two of the London bombers. Pakistani intel­li­gence sources are exam­in­ing whether any of those arrested on Thursday attended the same madrassa, or reli­gious school, as the 7/​7 bombers.

2. MSNBC is report­ing this after­noon on a dis­agree­ment between US and UK offi­cials ear­lier this week on the tim­ing of efforts to roll up the plot. According to MSNBC, the UK offi­cials wanted to wait, and see where the threads of the plot led; the US offi­cials wanted to act, fear­ing that an attack could take place. The report asserted that US offi­cials threat­ened to act on their own against the Pakistani sus­pects, prompt­ing the British offi­cials to move faster to arrest the indi­vid­u­als in the UK. No word yet from offi­cial sources on this report.
3. Fox News was report­ing ear­lier that the ter­ror­ist group Lashkar-​​e-​​Jhangvi is poten­tially con­nected to the plot. A story in The Hindu looks at a broader net of Pakistan-​​based ter­ror groups that might be con­nected to the plot.
4. The sit­u­a­tion is improv­ing but still prob­lem­atic at air­ports in the UK, with many can­cel­la­tions and exten­sive delays. Insurance com­pa­nies in the UK refuse to insure valu­ables checked in the cargo hold, rais­ing a new set of con­cerns about the UK’s emer­gency mea­sures. The avi­a­tion sys­tem in the United States returned to a state of rel­a­tive nor­malcy yes­ter­day, as trav­ellers were pre­pared for the new poli­cies. NPR reports here on Sec. Chertoff’s press con­fer­ence at National Airport on Friday after­noon.
5. New ques­tions are being raised about the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to develop explo­sive detec­tion tech­nol­ogy over the past sev­eral years. See my detailed post here.
– Christian Beckner (cross-​​posted from Homeland Security Watch)
Image source: Flickr

August 12th, 2006 | Homeland Security | 21031,284 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/08/12/uk-terror-plot-links-to-77/UK+terror+plot%3A+links+to+7%2F7%3F2006-08-12+21%3A03%3A06murdoc Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.