Christmas bomb plot is foiled as police stage raids
Armed police hold four after swooping on ‘Islamist bomb factory’ above a fish and chip shop
ARMED police carried out a series of early-morning raids in an operation to foil a suspected Christmas terror plot.
An Army bomb squad was deployed following a raid in Chesterfield and officers also conducted operations in three areas of Sheffield.
Counter-terror police said three men, aged 22, 36 and 41, were detained at different addresses in Sheffield, and a 31-year-old was held in Chesterfield.
An area of the Derbyshire town was sealed off for much of yesterday as a bomb disposal team worked with police behind a cordon. In the Meersbrook area of Sheffield, residents said they were woken by police blowing open the door of a rundown house as their street was swamped by armed officers in protective gear.
A few miles north, in the Burngreave area, a mosque and community centre were sealed off, with people telling similar stories of being woken at 6am by loud bangs and officers with guns.
Two other raids are understood to have happened at a flat near the centre and a property in Stocksbridge, just north of Sheffield.
The operation was mounted as police and MI5 tackle a terror threat seen as unprecedented.
A SUSPECTED Islamist Christmas bomb plot was foiled yesterday when armed police swooped in co-ordinated pre-dawn raids.
Fearing they had found a possible bomb factory in a flat over a fish and chip shop, counterterrorism officers urgently evacuated dozens of neighbours from their homes.
Police dragged a 31-year-old man from his bed and led him away wearing only his underwear.
He was named last night as Andy Sami Star, 31, an Iraqi national who is understood to be the owner of the chip shop and to live in a flat above with his brother.
An Army bomb disposal unit from the Royal Logistics Corps was also sent to the property in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
At the same time armed officers stormed into three properties 15 miles away in Sheffield by blowing off the front doors.
Police raided a flat at the back of the Fatima Community Centre, a building used as a mosque and for teaching Arabic to children.
A local pensioner said: ‘I heard three loud bangs like a bomb going off and looked out to see six armed police officers in riot gear. They brought somebody out from the back of the building and took him away.’ Amar Ghaman, the manager of the community centre, said two men who had recently rented the flat had been arrested.
The operation, which involved the search of five properties in total, was the result of a longrunning covert investigation involving Islamic extremism.
Senior officers believed component parts of a bomb were possibly being assembled and decided to act early yesterday. Police arrested four men, aged 22, 31, 36 and 41, on suspicion of preparing or instigating acts of terrorism.
Detectives refused to reveal details of what was found or the ethnicity of the suspects, but the operation was said to be ‘intelligence led and pre-planned’.
The operation in Chesterfield appeared to focus on a flat above the Mermaid Traditional Fish and Chip Shop. It is understood the business has recently been sold.
Neighbours said officers banged on their doors at around 9am and told them they had ten minutes to get out. Those living in three streets nearby were told to go to Chesterfield football stadium, less than half a mile away, while searches were carried out.
One neighbour said the two brothers who lived in the flat above the chip shop split their time between Chesterfield and Sheffield.
Another neighbour, Jordan Batteson, 25, said: ‘I saw a guy being taken out, he had no top on, it looked like he was just wearing boxer shorts.’
A spokesman for the North-East Counter Terrorism Squad said the evacuation was a ‘precautionary measure in the interests of public safety’. Part of the police cordon was lifted at around 4pm but police remained at the scene overnight.
In Sheffield residents were woken at around 5.30am by armed police blowing the front doors off three properties in co-ordinated raids. Neighbours looked outside to see counter-terrorism police carrying rifles and storming into homes under cover of darkness.
At Shirebrook Road in Sheffield a 41-year-old man was arrested at a rundown terrace house after the dramatic armed raid.
Neighbour Lizzie Fogarty, 27, said: ‘The police were all in black with helmets on and guns with a
torch aimed at the house. All you could hear was, “Get down, get down”. I could hear them sweeping the house.’
Miss Fogarty said there had been a lot of ‘coming and going’ from the house recently.
About four miles across the city police carried out two similar pre-dawn raids in the Burngreave area and arrested men aged 22 and 36.
Explosions were again heard as police forced their way into a ground floor flat. It is located about 200 yards from the flat behind the Fatima Community Centre that was also raided.
By 8.30am the police operation had moved to Stocksbridge, a town on the outskirts of Sheffield. Officers were waiting outside a Kurdish-owned barber’s shop and said to be looking for a man of eastern European origin.
Owner Mohammed Ojaky, 31, said police searched the hairdressers and his flat above and left with the CCTV camera.
He said: ‘They showed me details of a man and said they thought he was connected to here. I did not know this man.
‘I was happy for them to search here and let them into the flat, but they then left and we opened as usual.’
Mr Ojaky is originally from Kurdistan and has lived in the UK for 13 years. His staff are all Kurdish. He said: ‘There were 15 or 20 officers here and many were armed. It was a big shock.’
As a result of the raids security was stepped up elsewhere, with armed police patrolling the Christmas markets in Manchester.
The arrests came as police and MI5 tackle a terror threat that is seen as unprecedented. In addition to five attacks in London and Manchester this year, security agencies have foiled nine plots since the Westminster atrocity in March.