List of Terrorist Incidents in Great Britain - Arrests, Detentions, and Other Incidents Related To The Terrorism Acts

Arrests, Detentions, and Other Incidents Related To The Terrorism Acts

These are cases where either the Terrorism Acts were invoked, or which the authorities alleged were terrorist in nature at the time. It includes plots that were foiled at an early stage before any materials were actually assembled as well as totally innocent suspects.

• 2003 5 January: Wood Green ricin plot, where police arrested six Algerian men accused of manufacturing ricin to use for a poison attack on the London underground. No poison was found, and all men were acquitted of all terror charges, except for Kamel Bourgass who stabbed four police officers during his arrest in Manchester several days later. He was convicted of the murder of the officer he killed (the others he stabbed survived). He was also convicted of plotting to poison members of the public with ricin and other poisons. Two of the suspects in the plot were subsequently convicted of possessing false passports.
• 2003 October: Andrew Rowe arrested in Dover after being detained as he entered the Channel Tunnel in France. Convicted as a "global terrorist" and sentenced to 15 years in prison on 23 September 2005 on the basis of traces of explosives on a pair of socks and a code translation book.
• 2004 30 March: Seven men arrested in West Sussex in possession of 600 kg of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, as part of Operation Crevice.
• 2004 3 August: Fourteen men arrested, but only eight charged in relation to the 2004 Financial buildings plot following the leak of the identity of an Al-Qaeda double-agent. The men possessed detailed plans for attacking financial buildings in the US, but no actual bomb-making equipment. Their leader, Dhiren Barot, pleaded guilty at his trial on 12 October 2006, and was imprisoned for life.
• 2004 24 September: Four men arrested in the Holiday Inn in Brent Cross trying to buy red mercury, a mythical substance which could purportedly be used to construct a nuclear bomb, from a newspaper reporter. One man was released three days later, while the other three were cleared at their trial on 25 July 2006, during which the jury was told that "whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant".
• 2005 22 July: The Metropolitan Police tracked Jean Charles de Menezes onto a train and shot him seven times in the head at close range, because they thought he was a suicide bomber.
• 2005 28 July: David Mery arrested at Southwark tube station on suspicion of terrorism for wearing a jacket "too warm for the season" and carrying a bulky rucksack. All charges were dropped on 31 August. It took four more years for the police to apologise for the "unlawful arrest, detention and search of home".
• 2005 28 September: Walter Wolfgang, who had been ejected from the Labour Party Conference, was briefly held under Terrorism Act 2000 powers when he attempted to go back in.
• 2005 22 December: Abu Bakr Mansha, described by his barrister as an "utter incompetent", was accused of planning to murder a British soldier who had served in the Iraq War, and convicted under the Terrorism Act for possessing a document that was "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". He was sentenced to 6 years.
• 2006 2 June: The 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid (on a house in Forest Gate) saw the arrest of two suspects, one who was shot in the shoulder, on charges of conspiring to release a chemical weapon in the form of suicide vest. The suspects were cleared of suspicion and released days later.
• 2006 10 August: The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot to blow up 10 planes flying from Heathrow saw the arrest of 24 people from their homes in Britain, chaos at the airports as security measures were put in place and numerous high-level statements from US and UK officials. 8 people were put on trial, and 3 found guilty of conspiracy to murder. It was shown at their trial how bottles of liquid could be made into effective bombs. Since this incident, carriage of liquids in hand luggage on aircraft has been restricted to very small amounts. Rashid Rauf, suspected to have been the link between the UK plotters and Pakistan, escaped to Pakistan where he was arrested, but escaped again on his way to an extradition hearing. It was reported that he was killed in a US airstrike in North Waziristan in November 2008 .
• 2006 23 August: The 2006 Cheetham Hill terrorism arrests, where four men were arrested in the Manchester vicinity over the course of a month, and charged with financing terrorism.
• 2006 1 September: The Jameah Islameah School in Sussex was cordoned off for over three weeks and searched by a hundred police officers. Twelve men were arrested as part of the operation as they ate in a Chinese restaurant in London.
• 2007 1 November: Police searching for indecent images of children arrested British People's Party local organiser Martyn Gilleard in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act, over explosives found in his home. He was subsequently charged with possession of material for terrorist purposes and collection of information useful to a terrorist, and also pleaded guilty to possessing 39,000 indecent images. He was jailed for 16 years.
• 2008 14 May: The Nottingham Two were arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act 2000. A postgraduate student had downloaded a 1,500-page English translation of an Al-Qaeda document from the United States Department of Justice website for his PhD research on militant Islam. He sent it to a friend in the Modern Language department for printing. Both were cleared of terrorism-related offences, but the friend was immediately re-arrested on immigration grounds.
• 2008 14 September: Oxford graduate Stephen Clarke arrested after someone thought they saw him taking a photograph of a sealed man-hole cover outside the central public library in Manchester. He was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, held for 36 hours while his house and computer were searched, and then released without charge. No photographs of man-hole covers were found.
• 2009 13 February: 9 men arrested on the M65 motorway under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000. 6 were kept hand-cuffed in the back of a van for seven hours. The remaining 3 were detained for six days. No one was charged.
• 2012 28 June: The two men, aged 18 and 32, were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London, by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command, at 7am on Thursday. It was believed the men were involved in a bomb plot concerning the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "At approximately 07:00 hrs today, Thursday June 28, officers from the counter-terrorism command arrested two men under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. The men were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London. Both addresses are currently being searched under the Terrorism Act 2000".