The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) -- Police and the security services have prevented several terror attacks in London over the last 18 months, and the capital remains on a high state of alert, the police commissioner said Thursday.
“The activities undertaken by the anti-terrorist branch specifically in relation to London and nationally with the security services has prevented in some instances a possible terrorist attack on this city,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens said.
He declined to provide details of the threatened incidents in his address to a meeting of the watchdog Metropolitan Police Authority, but said he could brief members in private.
“I want to emphasise the high state of alert this city is on at the moment,” Stevens said.
“There has been a massive amount of work taking place in the anti-terrorist branch and security services for the last year and a half,” he said, adding that the work still continued “in a major way.”
Stevens said David Veness, head of the anti-terrorist branch of the police, had reported that “he is two and a half to three times busier now than he has ever been in his extensive experience.”
The government says that since the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 and the American-led war on Iraq, Britain is a possible target for attack.
Stevens has warned that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network _blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks -- has a substantial presence in Britain.
Police have staged simulated terror attacks in the British capital and offered advice to Britons about how to stay safe. Police forces in England and Wales are training teams to deal with a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack.