Daily Times

British Police and MI5 foiled an alleged plot to kill the UK Prime Minister Theresa May and blow up Downing Street.

Two Muslim men appeared at Westminster magistrate’s court, London, UK, on Wednesday morning charged with terrorism offences.

The prosecution alleged that British-Bangladeshi Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, from north London, conspired to launch a bomb attack at the security gates outside the British prime minister’s home in London, No 10 Downing Street, before detonating a suicide vest inside May’s home, taking the opportunity during the “ensuing chaos with a view to kill the prime minister”, prosecution said.

British-Pakistani Mohammad Aqib Imran, 21, from Birmingham, UK, is alleged to have tried to obtain a fake passport to leave the UK to join the Islamic State group in Libya. He carried out a series of acts in preparation for his overseas travel, including speaking to individuals online to obtain the fraudulent passport, researching extremism and travel options.

Both men appeared in the dock at Westminster magistrate’s court on Wednesday, dressed in similar clothing: grey shirt and trouser.

Each man was charged with one count of planning acts of terrorism. Rahman was additionally charged with assisting Imran with terror plotting. The hearing lasted slightly over five minutes. Neither man indicated how he would plead against the charges alleged.

The case has been sent to the Old Bailey, where the next hearing will be on December 20.

Both men were arrested in raids by the Scotland Yard police’s counter-terrorism command in London and Birmingham on November 28.

The alleged plot would have been the ninth that British police have managed to thwart by security services since the March 2017 Westminster terrorist attacks.

Details of the alleged plot were reportedly given to May’s cabinet on Tuesday morning by the director-general of MI5, Andrew Parker. MI5 is the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency.

Parker revealed that nine terrorist plots had been thwarted in the UK over the past year. He also revealed that the British police and MI5 had stopped 22 plots since 2013, when a British soldier was murdered outside Woolwich army barracks in southeast London. However, five successful terror attacks have been carried out in the UK during the past year.

British security forces are dealing with a spike in cases of homegrown radicalisation. In October, Parker warned that the threat of extremist attacks in the Britain was at its “highest tempo” that he had seen throughout his three-decade career.

On Tuesday, an official report by David Anderson QC, the UK’s former reviewer of terrorism legislation, stopped short of criticising MI5 and counter-terror police for failing to prevent the four terror attacks that have occurred in the UK since March 2017, that have killed 36 people.

However, the report – an independent assessment of MI5 and the counter-terrorism police’s internal reviews – highlighted how the intelligence services and police work together, including lack of intelligence sharing with local police forces and local authorities. “It is conceivable that the Manchester attack in particular might have been averted if the cards had fallen differently,” Anderson concluded.

Published in Daily Times, December 8^th 2017.