Translated material
Iraqi horror in Birmingham
The police prevented the massacre of a soldier
UK police have uncovered a major terrorist plot in Birmingham. According to unofficial information, the conspirators intended to kidnap a British Muslim soldier in his twenties who had come home from Iraq on leave.In the early hours of yesterday, West Midlands Police's counter-terrorism unit, with the assistance and technical support of Scotland Yard and British intelligence MI5, made eight arrests and searched at least 12 addresses in the southern outskirts of the country's second largest city, Birmingham. About 250 police officers took part in the operation. A ninth suspect was arrested on the motorway in the evening, West Midlands Police Deputy Chief David Shaw said.
According to preliminary data, all the detainees are young British citizens of Pakistani origin who profess Islam. They allegedly planned to torture the kidnapped soldier and force him to apologize in front of a video camera for joining the “army of infidels.” Then they were going to behead him and post this video on the Internet. Now this soldier is under police protection.
In the West, such abuse of a hostage is called “Iraqi-style reprisal.” The conspirators' scenario is very reminiscent of the terrible "online execution" that British engineer Kenneth Bigley and two other foreign hostages were subjected to in Iraq in 2004. The head of the Englishman Bigley was personally cut off by the head of the Iraqi branch of the international terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (he was killed by the Americans last summer).
British police learned of the plot six months in advance and made arrests only after it became clear that a terrorist attack was imminent. The search and collection of evidence continued throughout the day yesterday and is expected to continue throughout the week. Police have cordoned off three major areas of Birmingham and more arrests are not ruled out. “Now we are moving quite slowly, but confidently, trying not to miss any evidence and material evidence that will help in the further investigation,” said David Shaw. All detainees are being held at a police station in the city of Coventry, located 40 km east of Birmingham.
The attackers did not intend to make any demands to the British authorities. “This is quite in the style of al-Qaeda,” Paul Wilson, a counter-terrorism expert and professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told Vremya Novostey, “after all, their goal is not to achieve the fulfillment of some political conditions, but to intimidate people. In this case, they wanted to intimidate British Muslims, force them not to serve in the army, so that others would be discouraged.” According to our interlocutor, another target of the Birmingham conspirators was the population of Britain as a whole: “They want to scare ordinary people, force them to abandon normal life. All this suggests that in this case we are dealing with actions typical of al-Qaeda. There are very few such extremists in Britain, but they exist and are planning further acts of violence.”