IHT : Police given more time to quiz terror suspects arrested in London

Police given more time to quiz terror suspects arrested in London

The Associated Press | September 4, 2006

LONDON Police have been given more time to question 14 people arrested in anti-terrorist raids targeting a gang alleged to have run terrorist training camps in Britain.

A judge late Sunday gave officers until Sept. 8 to hold 11 of the suspects, arrested late Friday and early Saturday. The other three can be held until Wednesday before police must seek a further extension.

Under new British anti-terrorist laws, police can hold suspects for up to 28 days before they must be charged or released.

The suspects were detained in raids at a halal Chinese restaurant and locations across London. Government officials said the arrests were in connection with the alleged recruitment and radicalization of young British Muslims, but did not say what triggered the arrests.

The 14 men, aged between 17 and 48, were being questioned on suspicion of committing, preparing or instigating terrorist acts, police said.

Two other people were arrested Friday in an unrelated terrorist operation in the northern city of Manchester, police said.

Detectives continued to search an Islamic school Sunday in connection with the London arrests. A 3-mile (5 kilometer) exclusion zone was set up around the school, a former convent near Crowborough, 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of London, as officers examined the site.

Forensic specialists were sweeping buildings and woodlands and planned to search a lake in the grounds of the school, police said.

The Jameah Islameah School, set on several acres of grounds, had only nine pupils, according to a December 2005 government inspection report.

"Searches are being carried out at the school site and at locations across London. The suspects remain in custody," a police spokesman said Sunday on condition of anonymity, in line with force policy.

Charles Hendry, a lawmaker representing the area where the school is located, said the jailed radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri had visited the school with a group of followers. Al-Masri is serving a seven-year prison sentence for inciting his followers to kill non-Muslims.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported that among the properties raided by police was the London home of al-Masri's former spokesman, Abu Abdullah. Police would not confirm the precise locations of their searches.

Lawmakers and police have discussed tackling problems of homegrown extremism among Britain's Muslim communities since last year's suicide bombings on London's transit network, carried out by three Britons of Pakistani descent and a Jamaican immigrant who grew up in England.

Officers have in past two weeks charged 15 suspects with terrorism-related offenses over an alleged plot to bomb as many as 10 trans-Atlantic jets, following the arrests Aug. 9-10 of 25 people.

Police said the latest arrests were not linked to that plot, or to the July 2005 London attacks, which killed 52 commuters and the bombers.