The Canadian Press
LONDON (AP) - Police and intelligence agencies have prevented international terrorists from striking Britain by disrupting their planned attacks, the head of London’s police said Sunday.
“We’ve thwarted a number of attacks,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens told British Broadcasting Corp. TV.
“There’s a large number of people going through the courts. We can’t talk about the details of that, which is slightly frustrating,” Stevens said. “But we have had considerable successes and that’s been the result of working extremely hard with the intelligence services.”
Discussing the cases of alleged terrorists in detail could compromise any future trial, Stevens has said previously.
Five days after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, Stevens said a terrorist attack in Britain was “inevitable.” On Sunday, he said the terrorist threat remained “real.”
“When I said attacks were inevitable, during that period of time there was an attack taking place on London but we are there to ensure that that attack does not take place, and thank God up to date we have been successful,” he said.
He didn’t give details of the planned attack. However, in late March police arrested six men and seized 600 kilograms (1,300 pounds) of potential bomb-making fertilizer. The men have been charged with conspiring to cause an explosion and their trial is tentatively set for September 2005.
Stevens said cooperation between European countries on combating terrorism had improved “massively” in the last nine months.