The United Kingdom Police arrested 7 Iranians in what the government calls greater anti -terrorist operations in years

London – British anti -terrorism police officers arrested four Iranian men for an alleged plot to attack an un specified objective, and three others about an indefinite national security threat, London Metropolitan Police said Sunday. The government described operations as “threat and against terrorism against counter-state” in years.

The MET, as London’s police force is often known, said that five men between the ages of 29 and 46 were arrested on Saturday in various parts of England under the terrorism law on suspicion of preparing “a terrorist act.”

Four are Iranian citizens and the nationality of the fifth was still being established. Police said the attack plot was pointing to a single location that was not being named “for operational reasons.” They said that people in the facilities in question received “advice and support.”

All suspects were being interrogated in the police stations and had not been accused on Monday morning. Police said they were looking for several properties in London, the Manchester area in the northwest of England and Swindon in western England.

Forensic officers in a blue monkey were seen in a house in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where one of the men was arrested. Three of the arrests took place in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Manchester, one in London and one in Swindon.

Rochdale resident, Kyle Warren, told Great Britain Sky News that “heard a massive explosion” and saw “20 or 30 police officers” drag a man from a house in his neighborhood.

“We have seen a man retired from the back, he was basically dragged by the lateral entrance and thrown into all the bushes and then handcuffed,” he said.

The video filmed by the spectators and obtained by the News themezone BBC News Network showed the Armed Police withdrawing a man from a house in Rochdale, while another clip showed a man dragged by a street on Swindon with his hands tied and covered with plastic bags. BBC said military personnel participated in Rochdale arrests.

An ocular witness at Swindon told the BBC that they saw six men entering a coffee and ordering coffee and donuts before following a suspect who had been inside the business, where they “jumped on him.”

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the command against MET terrorism, said the police were still working to establish a reason “, as well as to identify if there may be more risk to the public.”

Separately, three other Iranian men, 39, 44 years old and 55, were arrested in London under suspicion of a national security crime as part of an unrelated investigation, police said.

The Secretary of the Interior, Yvette Cooper, said: “These were two main operations that reflect some of the greatest threat and counterterrorism operations against the state that we have seen in recent years.”

The National Intelligence Service of Great Britain, MI5, warned about a growing threat of attackers linked to Tehran. Cooper said that “ongoing research is immensely important” to determine if the arrests were connected to the Iranian state.

“This reflects the complexity of the types of challenges for our national security that we continue to face,” Cooper said.

The chief of MI5, Ken McCallum, said in October that his agents and the police had addressed 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022, the majority aimed at Iranian in the United Kingdom who oppose the authorities of the country.

He said at that time that there was a risk “of an increase in the aggression of the Iranian state in the United Kingdom” Conflicts in the Middle East deepened

In March 2024, Zeraati Zerapresenter of a television station in the critical language of the Iranian government, it was stabbed in his leg out of his home in London. Two men were later arrested in Romania and accused of the attack.

The official level of terrorist threat of the United Kingdom is “substantial”, in the middle of a five -point scale, which means that an attack is likely.

In:
• Terrorism
• Iran
• Great Britain
• United Kingdom
• London