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“The big bad wolf is still the Al- Qaeda threat. But my people are knocking over right-wing extremists quite regularly,” Bettison said. |
CAIRO — British police have foiled a massive terrorist plot by right-wing and supremacist groups to stage serial bomb attacks against mosques, amid fears that the extremist group is part of a wider network involving New Zealand and Australia.
"We are interdicting it so that it doesn’t first emerge into the public eye out of a critical incident like an explosion," Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire, told The Sunday Times.
A network of far-right extremists who plotted a bombing campaign against mosques has been uncovered by counter-terrorism detectives.
Bettison, whose force runs a regional counter-terrorism unit in Leeds, said 32 people have been arrested over the past six weeks during raids on more than 20 locations.
Several people have already been charged and more arrests are imminent.
A massive arsenal of rocket launchers, grenades, bombs and firearms was going to be used in the foiled terrorist plot to bomb British mosques.
The arsenal seizure is considered the largest in Britain’s history since the IRA mainland bombings of the early 1990s.
Police have also recovered in the terrorists’ properties membership cards of the far-right British National Party (BNP) and other right-wing literature.
Police sources said that the arrests come shortly after a recent case in which detectives seized maps and plans of mosques from the homes of far-right supporters.
There are some 1600 mosques in Britain, home to a sizable Muslim minority of nearly 2 million.
Right-wing Monster
British police officials affirmed that the plot is part of a larger scheme that goes beyond their territories.
Several people linked to the terrorist plot were arrested in Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire, said the investigations showed the terrorists were communicating online.
"The internet gives it reach and scope."
The senior police official said the plot comes to shed more light on the growing threat of right-wing terrorism globally.
"The big bad wolf is still the Al-Qaeda threat. But my people are knocking over right-wing extremists quite regularly."
Many have recently been sounding the alarm over the rise of far-right and white supremacist groups across Europe.
In Britain, far-rights groups like the BNP are playing the card of immigration to stoke sentiment against Muslims and immigrants.
Far-right political parties are gaining more grounds, with rightist parties across Europe, including the BNP, scoring big in the June elections of the European parliament.
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