Police raid ex-vice den in dawn raids on suspects
ANTI-TERROR police yesterday used explosive charges to blast their way into two houses in dramatic raids linked to the London Bridge killings.
They simultaneously swooped on two addresses in East London in the small hours of yesterday.
Police targeted a dilapidated semidetached house next to a garage on a barren stretch of a dual carriageway in Dagenham, as well as a small terraced home in East Ham. Screaming officers blew in the doors of both properties, before piling in and taking away the occupants at gunpoint.
A worker in a garage neighbouring the house in Dagenham said: ‘There were explosions and what sounded like gunfire at about 4am this morning. There was a helicopter flying around the area too. I heard it as I live just up the road.’
Bizarrely, the house – which is painted bright yellow – is believed to have functioned as a seedy swinger’s club until just over a year ago.
The property was known among sex party enthusiasts as ‘the little yellow house’ and hosted sordid sex parties that involved a ‘dungeon’ in its cellar.
The garage worker said the house was well known as a den of vice. ‘There used to be lots of swingers’ parties there,’ he said.
Another local who was woken up by the explosions – caused by a charge used to gain entry to the house – said: ‘ The first bang was huge and woke me up. The rest sounded like firecrackers’. Later in the morning a man was led into the
‘The first bang was huge’
house by police with his head covered by a blanket, although he was not in handcuffs.
He was led out again within 20 minutes and put in a van that left at speed.
In nearby East Ham another earlymorning blast gave police entry to a terraced property. The windows of a neighbouring property were shat- tered by the shockwave as officers breached the front door of the target house and dragged a family of six – three men and three women – from their beds.
Two police vans were later parked outside while forensics experts worked through the house.
One neighbour knew the family. He described one of the occupants, a man in his early 60s, as a ‘nice gentleman’ but was surprised by his ‘dismissive’ attitude to Saturday night’s terror attack.
He said: ‘They moved here two or three years ago. I saw the dad yesterday at around 10am and I spoke to him about the terror attack and he just said “forget about it”. He was dismissive.’ A relative of the family – who are said to be of a mixed Greek-Pakistani heritage – said last night that the house was raided because one of the inhabitants was friends with London Bridge terrorist Khuram Butt. The relative said the family were not arrested and were merely questioned at a hotel while forensics officers searched their home.