Major MI5 operation against al-Qaeda endangered by security breach

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Times

A huge MI5 and police counter-terrorist operation against al-Qaeda suspects in cities across the northwest had to be brought forward at short notice tonight after a security blunder by a top Scotland Yard officer.

Ten Pakistan-born nationals were arrested this evening after a long covert surveillance operation involving MI5 and police officers from the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit. But the operation was nearly blown.

Hours earlier, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism chief, was caught walking up Downing Street holding a document marked "secret" with highly sensitive operational details clearly visible to photographers.

The document, carried loosely under his arm, revealed how many terrorist suspects were to be arrested, in which cities they would take place and that members of the Greater Manchester Police would force entry into a number of homes equipped with firearms. The planned operation’s secret code headed the list of action that was to take place.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6061914.ece

---

This is not the first time that photographers have read documents being carried into 10 Downing Street. A government minister had proposals they were carrying visible (I can't remember which minister it was, now) which were subsequently dropped, I think. But this is the first security breach, as far as I know.

On edit: Here's the previous screw-up, from last year:

Two minsters have been left red-faced after documents taken to a Downing Street briefing were photographed and enlarged. Is it legal to do this?

Carrying a see-through file in one hand, housing minister Caroline Flint walked the usual line-up of photographers as she arrived at Number 10 to brief the Cabinet on the forecast for house prices. With widespread concern about the economy, it's no surprise that the gloomy predictions within made headlines.

The same day, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears was spotted with an e-mail print-out on the subject of the prime minister taking part in an Apprentice-style TV programme, to be called Junior PM.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7400741.stm

The 'Junior PM' publicity stunt was quickly dropped (thank goodness).

[enlightenment]

1. GOOD GRIEF.

I'm just a college teacher and I make sure that my roll sheet and gradebook are never open and available for casual viewing by others.

Does Mr. Quick desperately want a new assignment?

[JuniperLea]

2. Mr. Quick is quite slow...

And should be encouraged to find another line of work.

This is sheer stupidity.

[cosmicone]

3. It is almost always Pakistan-born nationals who are

implicated in these things

[crankmob]

4. al-Qaeda?

[KansDem]

5. Why the charade? The Brits should just do like the Americans do...

If you're going to expose a covert intel operation, call a noted pundit and give him all the details so he can write it up in his next column. Works like a charm!

[No More Bushbots]

6. +10 Internets to you

Huzzah!

[Ian David]

7. At least they didn't leave the files on the train this time. n/t

[CJCRANE]

8. This is a distraction

from the guy who died after being knocked over by a copper.

It's easier for them to take the criticism over a "blunder" and grab the headlines with a terror raid than face more questions over that incident.

[T_i_B]

16. This story was below the G20 death story on the news last night

and it's also embarrasing for the government. The public perception of Bob Quick following the Damien Green affair was not great either.

[CJCRANE]

17. Looks like

I was wrong on this one then. I wasn't aware of the backstory.

(It's just that during the Bush-Blair era there were a lot of conveniently timed terror raids that grabbed the headlines).

[antimatter98]

9. This is at the feet of Gordon Brown----totally incompetent. n/t

[damntexdem]

10. Uh, maybe the British government officials should put secret documents inside opaque folders.

Just a thought.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Police chief quits over blunder

Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer has resigned after his security blunder forced an anti-terror operation to be brought forward.

Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick quit after he inadvertently revealed secret papers to photographers when arriving for a briefing at No 10.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson said it was "with great sadness" that he had accepted his resignation.
...
The mayor confirmed Assistant Commissioner John Yates would replace Mr Quick as head of counter-terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7991307.stm

[Nihil]

15. He had become an embarrassment ...

> It is the second time in recent months that Mr Quick has had to apologise.
> He was the officer who ordered the arrest of Damian Green, the Shadow
> Immigration Minister, in November, after an investigation into leaks of
> Home Office information by a civil servant to the Conservative Party.
> He later accused “the Tory machinery” of undermining his investigation.
> He had to apologise after the Tories denied his accusation of dirty tricks.

(From the same article)

[Turborama]

12. Source: 12 arrested in 'very serious' terror plot in UK

Source: CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

- NEW: Men involved in plot associated with escaped al Qaeda operative, source says
- NEW: Some of those arrested were Pakistanis in the U.K. on student visas
- NEW: U.K.'s chief terrorism officer apologizes for pictures of him with documents
- Police from Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire Constabulary involved

British police Wednesday arrested 12 people in a counterterrorism operation, and locations were being searched, authorities said.

Arrests were carried out in a series of raids in northwest England, police said. Participating agencies included Merseyside Police, Greater Manchester Police and the Lancashire Constabulary, according to a statement from Greater Manchester Police.

The men arrested were involved in a "very serious" plot closely associated with al Qaeda and escaped al Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf, whom British intelligence have linked to the 2006 plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners, according to a security source with knowledge of the investigation.

The new plot was not believed to be targeting national infrastructure, such as rail lines, airports or utilities, nor was it clear if the plot was to involved bombs or an assault involving gunmen, the source said.

Details, the source said, were speculative at this point in the investigation.

The source also said authorities don't believe the targets would have been in the north of England, where the arrests took place, and that at least some of those arrested were Pakistanis in the United Kingdom on student visas.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/08/uk.terror.arrests/

---

Anti-terror swoops follow months of surveillance

Source: Guardian

The scale and speed of the anti-terror operation mounted by hundreds of officers across north-west England last night points to extensive prior surveillance of a suspected plot aimed at domestic targets.

The home secretary's decision to congratulate police even as the raids were going on reinforced the theory that senior Whitehall officials were confident a major security threat had been countered.

Describing it as a "successful anti-terrorism operation", Jacqui Smith said: "The decision to take such action was an operational matter for the police and the Security Service but the prime minister and I were kept fully appraised of developments. We face a severe terrorist threat in this country."

=snip=

The 12 men were arrested at seven separate locations across the north-west and at least another eight addresses were searched. Scores of students witnessed one arrest at Liverpool John Moores University. Police said one man was arrested near the campus. Student Daniel Taylor said: "When I looked I saw a man on the floor. Police were shouting at him and one of the officers had what looked like a machine gun pointed right into his head."

Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/09/anti-terror-operation-england

[bottomtheweaver]

13. "Details, the source said, were speculative"?

Does that mean they haven't finished pulling them out of their ass yet?

[Ghost Dog]

14. Rashid Rauf 'killed in US missile strike' (Nov 2008)

British terror mastermind Rashid Rauf 'killed in US missile strike'
A fugitive British terrorist has been killed in a US missile strike in Pakistan.

By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter
Last Updated: 1:12AM GMT 23 Nov 2008

Rashid Rauf, 27, who grew up in Birmingham, was killed along with at least three other militants in the attack on the house of a local tribesman in the North Waziristan area,

A US drone targeted the home in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

"The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan," a senior Pakistani security official said.

Rauf, who has been on the run after escaping from a Pakistani jail nearly a year ago, was said to have played a key role in a liquid bomb plot allegedly targeting transatlantic airliners in 2006.

Rauf, a British national who used to live in Birmingham, escaped from Pakistani authorities after appearing before a judge in an Islamabad court in December last year. At the time, he could have faced extradition to Britain within weeks.

After the escape, Khalid Pervez, a city police official, said that Rauf managed to open his handcuffs and evade police guards taking him back to Adiala prison in the nearby city of Rawalpindi.

/... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3500341/British-terror-mastermind-Rashid-Rauf-killed-in-US-missile-strike.html

Hmmmm...

British-Pakistani terror suspect Rashid Rauf alive: Hashmat Ali

Mon, Nov 24, 2008

LONDON: British-Pakistani terror suspect Rashid Rauf is still alive, his lawyer told the British on Monday and termed reports about his killing in a US missile attack as fake and baseless. The alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic jet bombing conspiracy was reportedly killed at the weekend in a US drone attack on Bannu.

“We don’t believe that this story is true. It is a fake story,” lawyer Hashmat Ali Habib told British radio, adding: “We still believe that my client, Rashid, is alive.”

He noted that requests for Rauf’s body to be returned to his family had not been answered. “This is a new technique of the government to dispose of the cases like Rashid or other missing people,” he said.

/. http://www.pak-times.com/2008/11/24/british-pakistani-terror-suspect-rashid-rauf-alive-hashmat-ali/

____

The mysterious disappearance of an alleged terror mastermind

Rashid Rauf's escape from police at a mosque seemed audacious. But his lawyer believes he is still in custody. Ian Cobain reports from Rawalpindi

* Ian Cobain
* The Guardian, Monday 28 January 2008

On the morning of Thursday August 10 2006, Britain awoke to the news that the security services and police were alleged to have foiled a terror attack that was to have been unprecedented in magnitude and mercilessness, according to senior Scotland Yard officers.

Using smuggled liquid explosives and detonators made from camera flashlights, Islamist terrorists were said to have been plotting to bring down 10 airliners in mid-Atlantic. Three thousand people or more were to have died.

A few hours earlier, New Yorkers watching late-night television news had been told official sources had identified the alleged mastermind as a British citizen called Rashid Rauf. A few hours later, Pakistani authorities were reporting that he had already been captured.

Little was known about Rauf at that time, other than that he was from Birmingham, and that he had flown to Pakistan four years earlier, one step ahead of detectives who were eager to question him about the murder of his uncle. Eighteen months on, the alleged terrorist mastermind remains something of an enigma, even though he is at the centre of another curious episode in the campaign against international jihadist terror - one far more difficult to fathom than the alleged airline bomb plot.

Shortly before Christmas, Rauf is said to have escaped from Pakistani custody when two policemen escorting him from court in the capital, Islamabad, to a jail outside the nearby city of Rawalpindi stopped to allow him to pray in a roadside mosque. The officers claimed that when Rauf walked into the mosque they waited outside in their car, never considering for a moment that he could simply walk out of the back door.

Both policemen are now themselves in custody, and the official Pakistani government explanation is that they were bribed. It is an explanation that appears to satisfy western officials in Islamabad. "The policemen must have been paid off, they didn't report it for several hours," says one. "The Pakistani government is seriously embarrassed by this." Others are not so sure, however, and suspect that Rauf may still be in custody, this time at one of the secret detention centres that the formidable Pakistani security agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is known to operate at anonymous suburban villas. "It wasn't an escape from custody," says his lawyer, Hashmat Ali Habib. "You could call it a 'mysterious disappearance' if you like, but not an escape. The Pakistanis are simply not interested in handing him over to the British. They never have been, although it is not clear why not."

What is clear is that in a country where ties of family and faith can mean more than duty or the letter of the law, where intelligence agencies stand accused of operating like terrorists and where terrorist gangs are the creation of those same agencies, nothing can be taken for granted in the strange disappearance of Rashid Rauf.

/... http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/28/pakistan.world1

Uh huh... Google for more...