Police in UK swoops on South Asians after London Blasts
By M Salim Khan - Pakistan Times Foreign Correspondent / Monitoring Desk

LONDON (UK): Britain’s anti-terrorist police investigating the London tube and bus bombings Tuesday raided five houses in West Yorkshire besides launching a massive crackdown on illegal immigrants in Manchester in which 40 people were arrested.

West Yorkshire includes former industrial hubs such as Leeds and Bradford with large Muslim populations of south Asian origin. Britain’s domestic Press Association said at least one of the raids was in Leeds.

String of Raids

British Immigration Police are conducting string of raids in different cities including Stockport, Oldham, Old Trafford and Ratchdel. They are also checking the documents of those permit holders who are working illegally in companies where they are unauthorised to work. As per law, people found working illegally are counted as illegal immigrants and hence deported immediately.

Immigration sources say that they are in search of such persons who are working illegally after the expiry of their visa and permits. Information is being obtained from Britain’s Inland Revenue Department in this regard. The areas facing crackdown are mostly inhabited by Pakistanis.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said the operation was “directly connected” to the attacks last week. “There have been a series of searches carried out in Yorkshire. Those searches are still going on. There’s very little else I can say at the moment, but this activity is directly connected to the outrages on Thursday,” he told BBC London.

The raids began at around 6.30am and are believed to have taken place at five houses in the Leeds area. They are the first to be carried out in Britain in connection with the bombings, but follow warnings from intelligence and anti-terrorism officials that those responsible could strike again.

Police are examining the theory that the bombers could have been on an “away day”, arriving in the capital to plant the devices and then fleeing. It is also suggested the bombers could have met at King’s Cross (where trains from Leeds to London terminate) as all three tube trains which were hit had passed through there.

Of Arrests

No one has been arrested, but the searches were continuing at all five houses this morning. Police cordoned off a white semi-detached house in Colwyn Road, a quiet residential street in the Beeston area of Leeds. A red Volkswagen car parked directly outside the house was also cordoned off.

Around 20 uniformed police officers, unmarked police vehicles and police vans were at the scene. A section of Tempest Road, which runs parallel to Colwyn Road, was also sealed off. One neighbour, who declined to be named, told The Nation she was surprised to wake up and see so many police officers and vans from her bedroom window.

“I got up about 8.30am and the police were all outside. Someone said they had been here since 7am,” she said.

“We don’t get any trouble in this road. It’s pretty quiet for the area really but we just don’t know what is going on. “It’s hard to tell exactly which house the police are apparently searching but I don’t think I know them. It’s a bit of a shock really.”

Scotland Yard has launched its biggest ever manhunt to catch those responsible for Thursday’s bombings. Extensive CCTV footage is being looked at and more than 1,700 people have called an anti-terrorist hotline since the attack, some providing specific information which police hope will lead to a breakthrough.
Hundreds of extra officers have been drafted in to assist the inquiry, which is being led by the London Metropolitan’s anti-terrorist branch. Officers from West Yorkshire police are also involved in today’s operation.

A police spokeswoman said: “This morning in a pre-planned intelligence-led operation, Metropolitan police officers supported by West Yorkshire police officers carried out search warrants issued under the Terrorism Act at four residential premises in West Yorkshire and are currently at a fifth address.”

The Bomber

The bomber responsible for last week’s explosion on a London double-decker bus was believed to be among the 13 people killed on board, adiscovery that led to raids Tuesday in Leeds, a northern city with a strong Muslim community, news reports said.

In a key development in the investigation into the terror attacks that killed at least 52 people, British soldiers blasted their way into a modest Leeds row house to search for explosives and computers. Streets were cordoned off and about 500 people were evacuated. Hours earlier, police searched five residences elsewhere in the city.

Pakistani Killed

Meanwhile, a Pakistani man was killed in a suspected racial attack in the central English city of Nottingham, police said on Tuesday, amid fears that such assaults could increase in the wake of last week’s bombings in London.

Pakistani national Kamal Raza Butt died Sunday, three days after the London bombings, and the attack was “being investigated as a racially-aggravated incident,” a Nottinghamshire Police spokesman said, adding that six youths arrested Monday were in custody and being questioned.

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, linked Butt’s death to Thursday’s attacks on three London subway trains and a double-decker bus which killed at least 52 and left hundreds injured.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has associated the bombings with Islamist Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network — the group behind the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.

Mosques windows Smashed

Several Mosques in Britain have had windows smashed or have been targeted by suspected arsonists since Thursday.

“There does appear to be a backlash taking place,” said Bunglawala.
“Up until the weekend no-one had been seriously injured but the weekend’s murder in Nottingham makes it far more serious.”

“We are in touch with the police over this,” he added. “They suspect it was racially motivated but they are not confirming whether it was anything to do with last week’s attacks.

Butt, 48, who was born in Pakistan, had been staying in Nottingham with a friend for around six weeks, police said. He was apparently assaulted shortly after he left a neighbourhood shop.

The man collapsed unconscious and was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
“Unless something comes along that links the events in London and this event, then we will treat it as an isolated incident,” said Nottinghamshire Police superintendent Dave Colbeck.

“From the inquiries we have made in the area, it leads us to believe we should investigate it as a racist attack.”

Four suspects Identified

Police declared their first arrest Tuesday as the pieces began to fall together in a fast-moving investigation into the bombings.

They said they believed they had identified four suspects over the bombings and that it was “very likely” one of the men who carried out the attacks last Thursday was among the dead.

London’s Metropolitan Police held back from saying that the blasts were the work of suicide bombers.

But it emerged that the operation was highly coordinated, with four prime suspects — as yet unnamed — having travelled together to the unsuspecting British capital on the morning of the rush-hour blasts.

“The investigation quite early led us to have concerns about the movement and activities of four men, three of whom came from the West Yorkshire area,” said the head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist squad, Peter Clarke.

“We are trying to establish their movements in the run-up to last week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions,” Clarke told reporters.

He added that it was “very likely” that one of the suspects was among those who died in one of the bombed Underground trains, near Aldgate station in east London.

Clarke said the “complex and intensive” investigation was “moving at great speed”, following raids on six premises in the industrial city of Leeds, in the north of England, home to a large Muslim population of south Asian origin.

Police evacuate Station

Police evacuated a railway station and car park in Luton, northwest of London, to carry out a controlled explosion on a vehicle with suspected links to last week’s bombings in the capital, police said Tuesday.

“The Metropolitan Police who are here examining a vehicle parked in the railway car park have carried out a controlled explosion in relation to that vehicle,” a Bedfordshire Police spokeswoman said.

“That was done about 3:50 pm [14:50 GMT] and the rest of the examination continues. The cordon remains in place but I expect it will be in place for some time yet.”

A 100-metre (100-yard) cordon was placed around the train station, which was shut to the public several hours after police launched raids on a number of premises in Leeds, northern England.

Mosques in UK, US, New Zealand Attacked

No sooner had the London blasts taken place than racist attacks against mosques in Britain, the US and New Zealand were reported.

Anas Al-Tikriti, the spokesman of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), told IslamOnline.net that an arsonist attacked a Mosque in central London and tried to set it on fire.

Media reports, however, said at least five Mosques have come under racist attacks, including one in northwest England set on fire, since the attacks that killed 50 people and injured 700 others on Thursday, July-7.

A man living in a flat above the Shahjalal Mosque, which is part of an Islamic centre in Birkenhead was treated for smoke inhalation but there were no other injuries.

The Mosque door was burnt and there was some damage inside, Merseyside police said.

London police said; there had been a number of racially and religiously-motivated hate crimes since the terror bombings, including one resulting in a serious injury.

"We have had a number of incidents of hate crime, racially and religiously motivated offences, and we take these types of offences very, very seriously," Commander Brian Paddick of the London Metropolitan Police told a press briefing. "There has been one serious injury."

Recap

The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said in June that the Muslim minority in Britain has been living in a "climate of fear" since the 9/11 attacks.

Tikriti told IOL; "MAB has registered some 70 verbal assaults, particularly against hijab-clad Muslims, since Thursday, July-7, when London was attacked."

The assaults included offensive phrases like "wicked Islam", "go home" and "you are behind the blasts" as well as emotional outbursts in the face of Muslims, he added.

Hotline

Tikriti, who championed a list of anti-war activists that vied in the European elections in Yorkshire and the Humber constituency in June of last year, said that two old couples insulted a hijab-clad woman, but she was protected by passers-by.

The activist said that MAB has established a hotline to receive complaints from British Muslims about racist attacks.

He said that they will embark on a series of social activities and media campaigns to show the true face of Islam in addition to peaceful marches.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has given British Muslims a set of safety tips to avoid reprisal attacks following the bombings.

Media Onslaughts

Tikriti feared that the media would unleash new anti-Islam campaigns in the wake of the blasts.

The Muslim activist said that the media onslaughts are aimed at pitting the Britons against the Muslim minority as it happened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Senior British parliamentarians admitted in August of last year that anti-terrorism laws are being used "disproportionately" against the Muslim minority.

Domino Effect

The London attacks have already had their domino effect with at least six Islamic centers in New Zealand vandalized and their walls painted with the message "Londoners RIP," police said.

In what appeared to be a co-coordinated series of attacks across Auckland , vandals smashed windows and doors and left variations of the same message in black paint on walls facing the street.

New Zealand Federation of Islamic Associations President Javed Khan said it was the first time an attack on this scale had occurred against the country's 40,000 Muslims, about 25,000 of whom live in Auckland .

Muslims were "shocked and saddened" by the incidents in London and appealed to his community to be calm and tolerant of the overnight attacks in Auckland, he said.

Prime Minister Helen Clark was quick to condemn the attacks, saying it was wrong to target the Muslim minority in New Zealand in retaliation for the terrorist attacks in London .

"New Zealand's Muslim community, like all New Zealand 's communities, is overwhelmingly a law-abiding and peaceful community," she said.

Opposition National Party leader Don Brash said the attacks were "an appalling act of intolerance" and the Green Party described the attackers as no better than the terrorists who brought death to London .

In the US, the FBI and members of its Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating a fire at a Bloomington mosque in Minnesota on Saturday as a hate crime, the American Indy Star newspaper reported.

The incident took place at the Islamic Center of Bloomington, where a ground-floor window was broken and an incendiary device was used to start a fire, an official of the mosque said.●