Intelligence

How surveillance ensnared enemy within

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory
Operation Crevice led to anti-terrorist raids across London's suburbs.

ANTI-TERRORIST officers had nervously kept their secret for weeks: how close Britain was to a devastating bomb attack. Only a handful of senior figures were trusted with the knowledge that a group of young Britons from half a dozen suburbs around London were finalising their plans to strike.

Most were living quietly with their parents or their young families. Bemused neighbours of the men said that that they had lived at the same addresses for years and had jobs such as taxi drivers and builders; one was an airport caterer. Another of the teenagers arrested yesterday was a student with ambitions to go to university.

All the young men were described as models of suburban respectability. But counterterrorist officers and MI5 suspected otherwise.

“This was truly the enemy within,” said one senior figure involved in what was named Operation Crevice. “This is proof that it’s not a question of if, it’s the when and the where.”

Even as leading politicians argued on television whether the public should be scared by repeated warnings from police and ministers about the inevitability of a terrorist strike, the plot was fast taking shape.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, was informed about it and gave permission for the telephones of some of the suspects to be tapped.

While all the speculation in recent days has been of possible British links to the train bombings in Madrid, the intelligence agencies have been concentrating on a number of terraced houses in locations such as Crawley, Slough and Ilford.

Undercover teams had been closely shadowing some of those arrested yesterday and are reported to have linked them to others in the group through telephone calls and e-mails.

At this stage, the counterterrorist teams said they did not know how any attack was to be carried out. Most of the men picked up yesterday were considered too young to have fought in Afghanistan or to have been schooled in bomb-making at al-Qaeda training camps. Police believe that they were recruited in Britain. Although most of them are of Pakistani origin, all were born in Britain or have spent most of their lives here.

The focus of the inquiry suddenly changed with a string of intercepted telephone calls inquiring about renting space in storage warehouses. These anonymous, prefabricated buildings are the perfect hiding place. They are large enough to store vehicles and, as witnessed yesterday, a builder’s sack full of industrial- strength fertiliser, without anybody paying much attention.

There are a number of Asian-owned building firms that use the Access storage centre in Hanwell where the fertiliser was found, so the sight of young men lugging a 6ft bag of what looked like builders’ materials was not out of the ordinary.

The dilemma for the security authorities was when to move in. Operation Crevice differed from previous terrorist surveillance operations in that the men being watched were spread so widely around London and the Home Counties.

Detectives were understandably guarded about why they chose yesterday to make their move. One suggestion is that they intercepted a telephone call which indicated that the half tonne of fertiliser was about to be moved.

In its industrial packaging in the Access storage unit, it was no danger to anyone. Those planning to fashion it into a bomb needed somewhere to mix the fertiliser with fuel oil and the explosive charge, then pack it into a van or lorry to deliver it to the intended destination.

One of the many addresses reported to have been searched yesterday was a warehouse in Slough, half an hour’s drive from where the fertiliser was stored. Police declined to say if it was from here that they suspected the bombmaker was to operate.

After intense discussions, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, and Assistant Commissioner David Veness, Scotland Yard’s most experienced terrorist expert, chose Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, for the early-morning raids. They had to co-ordinate in secret with five separate forces and the intelligence agencies for the biggest raid seen in Britain since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The 700 or so officers involved were told to gather before dawn at various assembly points around the Home Counties, where they were briefed as to their targets. Most of those involved were not told details of a possible bombing plot. The first raids began at 4.30am and by the end of the morning police and forensic science teams had moved in to 24 premises. Seven of those were in Crawley. One of the properties was in Juniper Close, where the homeowner was said by neighbours to work for a catering firm which prepares inflight meals for airlines at Gatwick airport. The man, of Pakistani origin, was said to live there with two sons and a daughter.

Another of the men taken into custody was arrested at the Holiday Inn at Gatwick, where police sealed off two rooms on the fourth floor while they were searched by explosives experts.

Curious onlookers were kept away from two neat homes in Gossops Green, where one of the neighbours, Martyn Tidd, 46, said that the father and sons who lived there all worked for a minicab firm which operated from Gatwick. Six more addresses raided were in the Bury Park area of Luton.

Bystanders in Overstone Road watched as an elderly Asian couple who had lived in the street for about 15 years were led away by police. Officers also searched a property across the road that the couple were said to have bought for their married daughter. A middle-aged woman and a man in his 20s left the house carrying an overnight bag as police made it clear that none of them had been arrested.

Anthony Pisano was leaving for work when he saw police in riot gear bursting into a flat near his home in Hencroft Street South, Slough, not far from Heathrow.

He could not remember the name of the tall, slightly built man of North African origin who lived in the converted property, but Dr Pisano described him as being in his late 20s.

On the few occasions that the pair chatted, the man had apologised for the noise he was making but explained that he was renovating the flat where he lived with his sister.

Near by, in Warrington Avenue, Slough, neighbours watched as forensic science teams investigated a white, pebble-dashed, semi-detached house.

When Joey Baynham, 19, looked through his bedroom window in Grovelands Road, Reading, and saw police break down the door of a house, he assumed that it was a drugs raid. An Irish woman who lived there, and who is thought to work at a school in the area, did not appear to be at home. Neighbours said she had a young lodger of Pakistani origin staying there.

Senior officers made clear last night this was just the first phase of Operation Crevice. Searches will continue today at all the properties that were raided.

Officers admited that they could not be certain that others involved in any plot may still have access to other homemade explosives. Above all, they do not yet know the targets the men may have had in mind.

March 30, 2004 at 11:03 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (31) | Top of page | Blog Home