Intelligence

Manhunt puts British capital on edge

TheStar.com - Manhunt puts British capital on edge

Commuters panic after police shooting

One man arrested during dramatic raid

SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU

LONDON—A manhunt has made this uneasy city the scene of heavily armed police raids, sidewalk arrests at gunpoint and the shooting death of a man in front of horrified subway passengers.

The race to catch Britain's most wanted resulted in the arrest of at least one man yesterday in south London under the Terrorism Act. But police haven't said if he is one of the four men who tried to blow up three subway trains and a bus Thursday.

Pictures captured by closed-circuit cameras show three of the suspects leaving the scene of the botched attacks and another with a backpack heading for a subway train.

The most dramatic incident in a tension-filled day occurred when police fired their first shots in London's war against terror — a battle they've waged since a suicide bomb attack two weeks ago killed at least 56 people.

The killing of the unidentified man left Britain's Muslim community leaders demanding to know why an apparently unarmed man was shot point-blank rather than arrested. Police say they saw the man emerge from a south London house that was under surveillance in the hunt for the bombers. The officers followed him to the Stockwell station at about 10 a.m.

"His clothing and his behaviour at the station added to their suspicions," police said in a statement last night, adding it's "not yet clear" whether the dead man is one of the suspected bombers.

Subway passenger Mark Whitby was sitting in a train when he suddenly saw a man run into the carriage and lose his footing at the moment plainclothes police jumped him from behind.

"I caught sight of his face for a split second and he looked absolutely horrified, and then he was on the floor," said Whitby, 47, adding that police immediately fell on him.

"Two of them went down on him — on their knees to hold him — and the other one with the gun just unloaded five shots into him," Whitby, a water systems inspector, said in an interview. "People were cowering, covering their heads as the shots were going off," he said, referring to other passengers.

Whitby, clearly shaken by what he witnessed, said police didn't hesitate — "not for a split second" — before opening fire.

After the shooting, commuters bolted in a panic-stricken rush for the exit, he said.

The incident occurred one stop away from the Oval subway station, one of the targets of Thursday's attacks.

Police have been given the power to shoot to kill if they suspect a suicide bomber. But they weren't saying last night if that's what the officers feared when they opened fire.

"This shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation," Metropolitan Police Chief Ian Blair told reporters.

"Any death is deeply regrettable," he said. "But as I understand the situation, the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."

Blair said police "are facing previously unknown threats and great danger" and called for people to remain calm.

But Muslim leaders are demanding an explanation.

"The police may well have had a good reason for shooting this man, but we need to hear what that reason was," said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain.

"We need to hear why it was not possible to disable and arrest this man and bring him to a court of law."

Police noted Thursday's attacks, which left one person injured, were similar to the far bloodier ones July 7. But they haven't said if they were the work of amateurish copycats or members of the same cell.

Forensic tests indicate "a bomb partially detonated at each of the four sites" in Thursday's attacks, said assistant police commissioner Andy Hayman. Media reports say the bombs, contained in backpacks, were made of acetone peroxide, the same mixture used for the July 7 bombs.

The Times published a picture yesterday of the backpack left on the upper deck of the No. 26 bus in east London. On a seat next to it is a battery, perhaps part of the firing mechanism.

The July 7 bombings were carried out by four suicide bombers, three of them British-born and one a long-time British resident. That investigation has taken police to Pakistan, which three of the bombers visited, and where several arrests have been made.

A 33-year-old biochemist who studied in Leeds, the northern England hometown of three of the bombers, is being detained in Egypt in connection with the attacks.

It's unclear how many of the four men in Thursday's attacks had planned to be suicide bombers. Hayman said the bombs were "left" on the subway trains and bus. He specifically noted the suspected bus bomber boarded the bus at 12:53 p.m. and left it at 1:06. Witnesses say they heard a small explosion about 20 minutes later.

But witnesses have described two other bombers holding smouldering backpacks that failed to explode.

"There's a high probability these men will be caught, dead or alive," said Robert Ayers, a security analyst who spent 30 years working with the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency in the U.S.

"They'll have a difficult time reconnecting with their support network because they're marked men. There's all sorts of forensic evidence from the bombs that didn't explode, so no one will even want to talk to these guys," Ayers said.

Ayers, an analyst with the respected Chatham House think-tank, believes the four bombers on the run are part of the same network that struck on July 7.

At about 1 p.m., heavily armed police descended on Harrow Rd., a multicultural neighbourhood of west London, for one of three house raids they conducted yesterday.

Patricia Osbourn, 35, said she saw an armoured police van come up a residential side street with officers armed with submachine guns taking cover behind it. Then they fanned out and took positions inside houses on Portnall Rd.

Marie Miri, 20, was asleep when three officers suddenly climbed through her back window. They ordered her and her partner into the kitchen and took over the living room overlooking the street.

"I woke up and I thought I was in Law and Order or something," she said, referring to the TV show.

Directly across the street was the house police were targeting. A neighbour said he saw police send a robot downstairs and through a basement door to hunt for bombs. They then fired six gas canisters into the house, smashed opened the front door and stormed the place.

Neighbours said the Omar family, originally from Somalia, lived there. Police made no arrests there, but it's believed a woman and teenager who lived at the address were arrested moments earlier around the corner, on the main street.

Police put a white suit on the teenager and took him and the woman away, witnesses said.

"I went out to buy some milk and suddenly I was confronted with this policeman with a submachine gun yelling at me to get off the street," said Petica Watson, 32, who happened on the arrest.

"London seems pretty crazy these days. It's amazing how so many policemen can just spring out of the woodwork."

Additional articles by Sandro Contenta

July 23, 2005 at 10:48 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home