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June 2, 2006
UK: London Terror Raid - Muslim Man Shot
6.20 BST, 5.20 GMT. This story will be updated when adequate news references are available. However BBC TV News has reported that this morning, at 4 am at 46 to 48 Lansdown Road, Forest Gate in East London, 250 anti-terror police descended on a house where two young men of Bangladeshi origin lived.
Some of the police had been wearing chemical protection suits. MI5 had the house under surveillance for several months, but it is believed that they had information that a chemical device was inside the house. In the raid, one 23 year old Muslim was shot in the shoulder, and was taken to hospital, where he was arrested.
Muslim neighbours filmed on BBC 6 O'Clock News were generally resentful and surly. One made the comment: "If you grow a beard, then you are a terrorist."
Updates will follow. 6.24 BST: BBC reveals that the name of the 23 year old man who has been shot is Abul Kahar, and the other 20-year old man, who is now in Paddington Green Police Station, is named Abdul Djilal or Jilal. The names did not come from police, who have so far refused to divulge the men's identity, but other sources. There are suggestions that the two men, who are British nationals of Bangladeshi origin, may be brothers.
News can be found on the BBC website. ITV News states that two forensic tents were erected outside the house, which was two addresses knocked into one.
A police statement made by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke claims that the safety of neighbours was taken into consideration, but specific information about a suspected chemical device necessitated the raid this morning.
Officers who took part in the raid were from S03 anti-terrorism unit, CO9 firearms unit, and CO11 public order unit. One single shot was fired. The Police Complaints Commission will be holding an invstigation.
Neighbours said that the man who was shot, Kahar, and who is now in Harisson Ward in Royal London Hospital had been a trouble-maker before he "got religion". His condition is said to not be life-threatening. He is expected to be moved to another location soon.
Abdul Kahar was a van driver for the Post Office and worked previously at Tescos supermarket. They have three sisters. All members of the family lived in the street. One man, claiming to be a cousin of the men arrested, has counterclaimed that the two brothers had always been religious. The three mosques where the two men worshipped are all said to not be radical.
This is the full test of the statement by Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan police's deputy assistant commissioner, as reproduced in the Guardian:
Friday June 2, 2006
This morning, shortly before 4am, the Metropolitan police executed a search warrant at a house in Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, east London. The warrant had been issued for the search of those premises under the authority of the Terrorism Act 2000.
This operation was planned in response to specific intelligence. As always, our overriding concern is for the safety of the public. Because of the very specific nature of the intelligence, we planned an operation that was designed to mitigate any threat to the public, either from firearms or from hazardous substances.
Some officers were armed, and others equipped with protective clothing. In planning the operation, we worked closely with other agencies including the security service, the Health Protection Agency, the London Ambulance Service and Fire Brigade, and the London Borough of Newham.
You will appreciate that I am not in a position to discuss details of the intelligence with you. However, what I can tell you is that the intelligence was such that it demanded an intensive investigation and response.
The purpose of the investigation, after ensuring public safety, is to prove or disprove the intelligence that we have received. This is always difficult, and sometimes the only way to do so is to mount an operation such as that which we carried out this morning.
During the course of the operation, a 23-year-old man who was in the premises received a gunshot wound. The circumstances of this are being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and it would therefore be inappropriate for me to make any further comment about this.
I can tell you that the injured man has been taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he has received treatment. He has also been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Another man, aged 20, who was in the premises at the time of the operation, has also been arrested under the Terrorism Act, and is being held at Paddington Green police station.
The investigation, to prove or disprove the intelligence that prompted the operation, continues. As always this will be thorough, and one part of it will be a painstaking search of the premises in Landsdown Road. This has started, but may take some time, in all probability several days, to complete.
Because of the fact that there are investigations being conducted both by the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) and ourselves, you will appreciate, I'm sure, that I am limited in the amount of detail I can give you, and that at this stage it would be inappropriate for me to answer questions.
We will give out further information as soon as we are able to do so, but I would like to reassure you that we are working very closely with the local community to offer reassurance and to ensure their continued safety.
Further news and information can be found on ITV.com, with an additional feature on community reactions by the BBC.
Other reports can be found in the New York Times and the East London and West Essex Guardian.
Neighbours quoted in the reports have varied accounts of the two men. A neighbour shown on Sky News refused to be identified, and insisted on bleating out Koranic references before speaking. He said: "They shot an unarmed man because he wanted to try and protect his family." He claimed the shot man was a "humble guy". He said that Kahar had been "to your schools, your workplaces, and paid his taxes, and at 4 a.m. the police gave him a present - they gave him a hole in the chest."
In typical Muslim ignorance, the man said that police had conducted the raid because "they want to give us Muslims a bad name."
Others were less sectarian in their approach. One 22-year old, a local Muslim councillor, said: "We have never seen anything like this before. There are small problems, with drugs and with burglaries, but generally it is a really quiet area, and Lansdown is the quietest street."
One neighbour said: "Going into someone's house and shooting them in front of their mum, that's not right is it? Just because they have got a beard doesn't mean to say you can shoot them."
It sounds that one or two individuals from the Muslim community appear to be in a state of denial.
The Times reports that neighnours claim that the two arrested men were born in Britain. Though there is a suspicion that the house may have been used as a chemical bomb factory, there is no assumption that the individuals were connected with the bombings last year on London Transport, from July 7th, where 52 people were killed. A fortnight after that event, four more attempts to blow up London Transport interests were made, but the explosive devices failed to detonate properly.
A 24-year old relative of the pair said of Kahar: "He loves his motorbike and loves his fitness. If he's a fanatic about anything it's his fitness. Ever since I've known him he's been religious. He's been religious from a very young age. He is being portrayed as a Westernised person, that is not true."
"He was very close to his brother. They lived together. He got him a job in Tesco because he worked there first."
Another associate of the two men said that they had been educated at Rokeby School in Stratford, east London. After 9/11 the older brother began to grow a beard and started praying five times a day.
"When we were younger he was no angel. But he changed, we all just grew up. He chose to go on the right path. He prayed five times a day, he went to the gym every day and other than that he stayed at home."
"Every time he spoke he would say peaceful things. He would give advice to everybody. Out of all our crew he was one of the good ones, working and looking after his family."
UPDATE: 3 June - News from ABC.net states that through their lawyers, the two men arrested (names now explained as Abul Koyair and Mohammed Abdul Kahar) have proclaimed their innocence. Kahar's lawyer Kate Roxburgh said: "He was woken up about four in the morning by screams from downstairs, got out of bed in his pyjamas obviously unarmed, nothing in his hands and hurrying down the stairs. As he came toward a bend in the stairway, not knowing what was going on downstairs, the police turned the bend up towards him and shot him, and that was without any warning. He wasn't asked to freeze, given any warning and didn't know the people in his house were police officers until after he was shot. He is lucky still to be alive."
Outside the Royal London Hospital, where Kahar is being treated, a group of about 20 Asian (Muslim) men have staged a protest.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 2, 2006 1:21 PM
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