U.K. Police Make 5th Terror Arrest

By IAN STEWART

GLASGOW, Scotland – Police searched several houses near Glasgow International Airport on Sunday in connection with a fiery attack on its main terminal and a foiled car bomb plot in London, and police arrested a fifth suspect in the case.

Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the country was dealing with terrorists associated with al-Qaida. And Lord Stevens, Brown’s new terrorism adviser, said the two attacks in Britain indicate that “al-Qaida has imported the tactics of Baghdad and Bali to the streets of the UK.”

Four suspects were in police custody Sunday – and a fifth man was under guard in hospital – after a flaming Jeep crashed into a Scottish airport on Saturday and two car bomb plots were foiled in central London on Friday.

Police said Sunday’s search was taking place in a residential area about seven miles west of central Glasgow, about a mile from the airport. The area around a two-story house in Houston, a small town just outside Glasgow, was cordoned off.

Scotland Yard said two people were arrested early Sunday on a major highway in Cheshire, northern England, in a joint swoop by specialist officers from London and Birmingham. Another person was arrested overnight in Liverpool, police said.

Police offered no further details on those arrested.

In Scotland, officers arrested two men – one of them badly burned – after a Jeep Cherokee rammed into Glasgow airport and burst into flames. The green SUV shattered glass doors at the terminal entrance, stopping within yard of where passengers were lined up at check-in counters.

Police and security officials said the attacks were clearly linked, adding all three vehicles carried large amounts of flammable materials – including gasoline and gas cylinders. The chaos over the past two days has raised fears that the type of car bomb attack that have become commonplace in Iraq has now reached European shores.

Britain on Saturday raised its terror alert to “critical” – the highest possible level – and the Bush administration announced plans to increase security at airports and on mass transit.

In an interview on British Broadcasting Corp. TV Sunday, Brown, who replaced Tony Blair as Britain’s prime minister last week, said Britons face a “long-term and sustained” terrorist threat.

He said that Britain’s message to the terrorists must be: “We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life.”

Brown said it is “clear that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaida.”

In a column in Sunday’s News of the World newspaper, Lord Stevens, London’s former police chief and Brown’s new terrorism adviser, said: “This weekend’s bomb attacks signal a major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists.”

He said, “This week’s terrorists used the same technology, the same bomb-making techniques, the same operating methods as their brothers-in-arms in both Baghdad and Bali,” Indonesia.

In central London, police foiled a car bomb plot early Friday, discovering explosives packed into a Mercedes outside a nightclub near Picadilly Circus and in another car parked nearby.

Glasgow police chief Willie Rae announced the attempted attacks were connected and said a suspect device had been found on a man wrestled to the ground by officers at Glasgow airport and hospitalized in critical condition with severe burns. John Smeaton, who saw the airport attack, said the man shouted “Allah, Allah” as he was detained.

British media said the man wore a suicide belt and that police found propane gas cylinders in the vehicle in Glasgow. But police later said an initial inspection by explosives experts had not found a suicide vest. Rae did not mention gas cylinders.

Glasgow airport began reopening Sunday, although the airport operator warned many flights would be canceled. Cars were not allowed to drive up to the terminal building. The crashed Jeep remained in front of the building, covered in a blue tarpaulin.

Liverpool John Lennon airport in northwest England, which was closed late Saturday because of a suspicious vehicle, also reopened.

The new terror threat presents Brown with an enormous challenge, and comes at a time of already heightened vigilance one week before the anniversary of the July 7, 2005, London transit attacks. Those were largely carried out by local Muslims, raising ethnic tensions in Britain.

A British government security official said methods used in the airport attack and Friday’s thwarted plots in London were similar, with all three vehicles carrying large quantities of flammable materials. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

He said it was too early to be sure whether the suspects had been aided from overseas, but that officials would investigate international links.

The events held similarities to recent thwarted plots in Britain. Last year, a 35-year-old British convert to Islam was convicted of plotting to bomb several U.S. financial targets and luxury London hotels, using limousines packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails.

Accused members of an al-Qaida-linked terror cell were convicted in April of plotting to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub, one of London’s biggest music venues.

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On the Net:

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