Quote:
Police in central England arrested eight people in a major security swoop on Wednesday which a defense source said involved a plot to kidnap and possibly kill a Muslim British soldier.
Detectives said the suspected conspirators were arrested in dawn raids across the city of Birmingham on "suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism."
Twelve addresses in Birmingham, Britain's second largest city and one of its most ethnically diverse with a large Muslim population, were sealed off by uniformed officers and searched.
Britain has been on its second highest alert level since four Britons killed 52 people in London in July 2005 in Western Europe's first Islamist suicide bombings.
Security experts said the suspected plot was a departure from the mass-fatality attacks on transport networks and showed Britain was on the frontline of al Qaeda-style attacks.
"It certainly seems to confirm Britain is particularly vulnerable to al Qaeda-style attacks because of the historic links to Pakistan and the Pakistani community here," said Shane Brighton, a terrorism expert at London think-tank Chatham House.
"The suggestion is that there is a higher level of risk in the UK from those Pakistani-linked groups that there is elsewhere in Europe. We may well be on the forefront of this."
...
Sky TV quoted sources as saying the intent was to mimic the abductions and beheadings of Westerners carried out by militants in
Iraq and post a video of the killing on the Internet.
Such a murder would be similar to the fate of Briton Ken Bigley, who was kidnapped and later beheaded by al Qaeda's then leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004.
A defense source confirmed to Reuters the suspected target was a Muslim serving in the British military. A police source said the suspected plot would not have caused mass casualties, but would have involved a new terrorism tactic.
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UK terrorism kidnap plot thwarted: source - Yahoo! News
If this is true, it adds a new dimension to the scary. To kidnap a British person off the streets, film them begging for their life and then execute them...its just disgusting to think off.
People said on the news this is a new psychological tactic to make people feel they are not safe in the UK anywhere and to intimidate Muslims who are integrated into British society.
It makes my blood boil!
