Britain: British police fear that a young Muslim man arrested on suspicion of being a member of al-Qaeda was building a shoe bomb that he planned to detonate in a suicide terrorist attack aimed at killing as many people as possible, writes Lynne O'Donnell in Manchester
Sports authorities in Manchester were working closely with police ahead of a heavy schedule of weekend football matches amid fears that the man, Sajid Badat (24), was part of a terrorist cell plotting to attack a crowded target.
Police were quoted as saying that sports shoes with hollowed-out heels were found in Mr Badat's home, and that he was planning to fill them with high explosives for an attack that would inflict mass casualties similar to those in the September 11th, 2001 attacks in America and last year's Bali bombing.
Mr Badat was arrested at his home in Gloucester on Thursday morning and a small quantity of explosives was found in the small red-brick terraced house he shared with his parents. He is being held in London while being interrogated about his links to al-Qaeda and the possible existence of terrorist cells in Britain that could be planning a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks.
One media report said police were hunting up to 20 men from north Africa who could be involved in the attack plot, and quoted a detective as saying suicide attacks on British soil were "inevitable".
Mr Badat's arrest under section 41 of the Terrorism Act coincided with raids elsewhere in northern England, including a house in Manchester where at least one man was detained, and an Islamic centre in Lancashire in a Scotland Yard sweep of suspected terrorists. Police were last night searching at least two other houses in the vicinity of Mr Badat's home. Gloucester is considered a sensitive area as it is close to the homes of several royals, including Prince Charles, as well as the government's top secret intelligence base at Cheltenham.
Britain has been on a high alert for al-Qaeda strikes for the past month. Concerns about suicide attacks followed intelligence reports of intensified "chatter" indicating that Britons were to be targeted for terrorist atrocities in much the same way as Americans and Australians have been.
Those concerns grew with the visit to London last week of President Bush, though attention was focused within Britain, not, as it turned out, on British interests abroad. Since the devastating attacks on the consulate-general and HSBC bank in Istanbul, which marked the first time that British interests had been targeted by Islamic fanatics, security forces said al-Qaeda cell activity has escalated.
Government sources said that this week's raids could have headed off the "spectacular" attack, with visions of fireballs and horrific casualties, that Britain has so far escaped. But they also worried, said one source, that "we're only scratching the surface and the worst is yet to come." One government source, who declined to be identified, believed the targets of such an attack could include football stadiums, the London Tube system, aircraft or shopping centres.
Mr Badat has been linked to Richard Reid, the original so-called shoe bomber who bragged about his allegiance to Osama bin Laden before being sentenced by an American court in January to 110 years in prison for attempting in December 2001 to blow up a jet bound from Paris to Miami carrying 197 people. His efforts were thwarted when he was seen trying to ignite the crude bomb in his sneakers and was overpowered by flight staff and passengers.
British newspapers have said that Mr Badat worshipped at the same mosques that Reid attended in London - mosques in Finsbury Park and Brixton that became notorious for the extremism of imams who preached hatred of the West and exhorted young men to wage jihad, or holy war, on the perceived enemies of Islam.
News of Mr Badat's arrest was greeted with surprise and sorrow in his neighbourhood, and with concern among the Muslim community of Manchester, Britain's second largest city.
Usman Saddique (27) said he feared the police raids could sharpen racial tensions that have been simmering since riots in nearby Bradford and Oldham in the 1990s. Wearing the white kurta pyjamas favoured by Pakistani men, Mr Saddique, a quality management student at Stafford University, was collecting signatures in Manchester's Piccadilly shopping plaza for an anti-war petition he plans to present to the local council.
"It does make me feel vulnerable because we do stand out," he said. "There are some people who are a bit too religious. I wouldn't go to another country to fight someone else's fight because I'm non-violence, violence isn't going to solve anything, it just makes things worse." But, he added, "it wouldn't surprise me if [suicide attacks] happened here, because it could happen anywhere."
As local newspapers reported that executives of local football clubs, including Manchester United and Bolton Rangers, were meeting police to discuss added security for today's matches, the Central Mosque in the wealthy Victoria Park district was expecting up to 2,000 worshippers for Friday prayers.
The head of the mosque's committee, Mr Ihtiram Khan, said his concerns following the police raids were that Islam was once again being brought into disrepute as a creed of hate. "It's the wrong impression," he said as police vans patrolled Daisybank Road outside.
"This is a minority who resort to these actions, they don't represent the whole community. At times we do feel fear that tensions will escalate and things could get out of hand. We are vigilant," he said.
Born in Britain to parents who emigrated from Milawi in the 1960s, Mr Badat was described by associates as a devout Muslim who excelled in his studies at the College of Islamic Knowledge and Guidance in Blackburn. Some were quoted as saying he was popular and outgoing, others that he bragged of recently returning from Pakistan after spending five years at a religious school and becoming a member of al-Qaeda.
Attention on Pakistan's role as host to al-Qaeda has diminished since the US and Britain turned their attention to Iraq, but the current issue of Newsweek magazine reports that there are an estimated 27,000 madrassas, or religious schools, in the country, many of which turn devout young men into warriors for Islam.
"We teach jihad because the holy Koran teaches jihad, which is the defence of Islam," the magazine quotes the head of Pakistan's biggest religious school as saying.