Release of Terror Raid Suspects Embarrassment for U.K. Officials
The news was an embarrassment for British authorities, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who claimed at the time of their arrests that police had disrupted "a very big terrorist plot" that had been monitored "for some time." The arrests were rushed in part because a police commissioner inadvertently exposed details of the operation to photographers outside the prime minister's office. Police had to scramble to catch the suspects before they learned of the raid, forgoing their usual dawn raids for a dramatic series of daytime operations across northern England on April 8. Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, one of the country's top counterterrorism officers, resigned after he inadvertently exposed details of the operation. One suspect was forced to the ground by gun-toting officers in front of students at the library of Liverpool John Moores University. Most of the men taken into custody were Pakistanis in Britain on student visas.
LONDON — British police released the last of 12 suspects rounded up in a series of dramatic anti-terror raids earlier this month, failing to charge any of the men, authorities said Wednesday.
