British police allege kidnap, execution plot

LONDON – British police on Wednesday arrested nine suspects in a possible Iraq-style plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier and broadcast his death on the Internet.

Authorities launched a series of raids at an Islamic bookshop, a small market and at least 10 other sites in several neighborhoods of the central English city of Birmingham, cordoning off streets and launching a massive search that was expected to last for several days.

The soldier believed to be the target of the plot has been identified and is in a safe location, authorities said.

“It was an attempt to kidnap a British Muslim soldier and behead him, film it and post it on some ghastly Internet site,” a British security official said.

The Home Office, in a statement, confirmed the arrests but declined to give any other detail. “This operation is a reminder of the real and serious nature of the terrorist threat we face,” the statement said.

Anti-terror services learned of the plan months ago, placed the suspects under surveillance and took steps to protect the intended victim, the security official said.

If details of the case unfold as police believe they will, they would suggest that militants in Britain have moved from difficult-to-execute bombing plots to the low-tech option of kidnapping. Terrorism analysts said the plot as described by police sources appeared to be mirrored on the videotaped executions of kidnap victims in Iraq.

“It seems that this is importing some of the tactics used in Iraq to Britain, which has been predicted by some people, just because terrorists are always looking at new and innovative ways to get their message across,” said Matthew Hunt, an analyst with Janusian Security Risk Management in London.

Britain has 1.5 million Muslims but one police source said only about 300 Muslims are in the military. The country is home to the largest population of Pakistani immigrants in the world, and also large populations of immigrants from India and Africa, many of whom complain of anti-Muslim bias.

Extremist sentiment has been growing among some younger, second-generation Muslims, with many expressing anger over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and with Britain’s failure to seek a halt to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon over the summer.

In a poll published by the Daily Telegraph last week, 40 percent of young Muslims said they would prefer to live under Islamic sharia law in Britain. One in eight said they admired groups such as al-Qaida that are “prepared to fight the West.”

“I don’t doubt that there really is a risk of terrorism. I don’t doubt that at all. But in the way people are being accused lock, stock and barrel, there is so much skepticism about that in the country,” said Moazzem Begg, a Birmingham resident who, according to the British Broadcasting Corp. was the founder and former owner of the Islamic bookshop that was raided Wednesday.

Begg was arrested on suspicion of terrorism in 2000 and held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charge.

Masher Syed, a volunteer at the Ludlow Road Mosque near the scene of several of the arrests, said police briefed mosque leaders but could provide no detail on the evidence against the detainees.

“They’re talking about a kidnapping and a beheading. If you’re going to believe their word, you might as well believe a hundred other stories on the Internet. How can they read people’s minds?” Syed said.