LONDON: British police arrested nine men as part of an operation into Islamist-related militancy on Thursday, with media reporting the country’s most high-profile radical Muslim preacher was among those held.
Britain last month raised its international threat level to the second-highest classification of “severe”, meaning an attack is considered highly likely, and Prime Minister David Cameron has said the Islamic State group battling for territory in Syria and Iraq poses the country’s greatest ever security risk.
Police said the arrests were not in response to any immediate threat but that the men were held on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and belonging to and supporting a banned organisation. “These arrests and searches are part of an ongoing investigation into Islamist-related terrorism,” police said in a statement. The BBC and Sky News reported that one of the men held was Anjem Choudary, the former head of the now banned organisation al-Muhajiroun. It gained notoriety for staging events to commemorate the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States with leaflets that referred to the hijackers as “the Magnificent 19”. (PTI)
