Britain raises terror attack level
By IANSSaturday, January 23, 2010
LONDON - The British government has raised the threat-level of a terrorist strike to “severe” over fears that the Al Qaeda is planning a wave of attacks after a failed bombing attempt on a transatlantic flight.
The decision Friday followed analysis by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a unit of Britain’s MI5 spy agency, and indicates an attack on Britain is now “highly likely”.
The level was raised after Prime Minister Gordon Brown was briefed by the heads of Britain’s security services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee.
Sources told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the attempt to blow up the flight to Detroit on Christmas Day last year demonstrated a new methodology and was “one of the factors” behind the decision.
Britain’s Home Minister Alan Johnson said: “I should stress that there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent.”
Brown told British parliament this week that “a number of terrorist cells are actively trying to attack Britain and other countries” and described the Christmas Day attempt as “the first operation mounted outside Arabia by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Nigerian student Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab is in US jail over the attempt.
Britain has five levels of threat: critical, severe, substantial, moderate and low.
