Keystone Kops Alert from Absurd Britannia. Note that these suspected Al-Qaeda plotters are identified only as “men.” Their guiding ideology and motivations are apparently irrelevant.
“Ten arrested amid anti-terror blunder,” by Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph, April 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A major counter-terrorist operation in which 10 men were arrested had to be urgently brought forward because of a catastrophic security blunder by the country’s most senior anti-terror policeman.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was photographed entering Downing Street carrying a briefing note headed SECRET, on which details of an undercover operation against a suspected Al-Qaeda cell could clearly be seen.
The document set out the strategy for for the operation, an investigation into a suspected cell based in the north west of England and allegedly plotting an attack in the UK, including details of suspects and how the police intended to arrest them.
The realisation by Mr Quick that he had held the document in open view as he was filmed going into a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee prompted alarm in Scotland Yard, which ordered the immediate arrest of the suspects.
As a result, 10 suspects were rounded up in daylight raids in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire, but it was not immediately clear whether other suspected terrorists might still be on the run as a result of the blunder….
Whoops!