UK police are said to be probing the possible British links of the man behind the Norway terror attacks.
Anders Behring Breivik has admitted carrying out the Oslo bombing and Utoeya island youth camp shootings on Friday which killed at least 93 people.Mr Breivik, 32, referred to a British mentor called "Richard" in a rambling 1,500-page manifesto published online.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK National Security Council would meet on Monday to discuss the attacks.
Extremists claim Mr Breivik, a Norwegian with far-right links, says he carried out the attacks alone.
He said he planted the bomb which killed seven people in central Oslo and later carried out a massacre of 85 people at a youth camp on Utoeya. An 86th person died in hospital on Sunday.
He described his actions as "gruesome but necessary" and said he would explain himself at a court hearing on Monday.
Scotland Yard said a police officer had gone to Norway to help with the inquiry and the Metropolitan Police was liaising with the Norwegian authorities.
In the manifesto, written in English, Mr Breivik claimed he was recruited by two English extremists at a meeting in London in April 2002 attended by a total of eight people.
He signed the document with an anglicised version of his name - Andrew Berwick - and it was datelined "London, 2011".
The manifesto said he used to have more than 600 English Defence League (EDL) members as Facebook friends and had had contact with EDL leaders.
Potential targets The EDL has denied any official contact with him.
A statement on its website said: "We can categorically state that there has never been any official contact between him and the EDL.
"Our Facebook page had 100,000 supporters and receives tens of thousands of comments each day. And there is no evidence that Brievik was ever one of those 100,000 supporters."
Mr Breivik made repeated references to former UK Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, accusing them of making London a global hub of Islamist terrorism.
The Prince of Wales is criticised for his patronage of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
Potential UK targets for attacks are mentioned including North Sea oilfields and the BP exploration office at Dyce in Aberdeen.
According to the Daily Telegraph, a Scotland Yard source said he was not thought to have visited the UK this year but police were "making inquiries into any possible links to British extremists and liaising with the Norwegian authorities".
'Firearms controls' Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Hague said the National Security Council would "look at the lessons to be learned" from the attacks in Norway.
"We will check that enough attention is being given to all forms of terrorism," Mr Hague said.
He added: "We have tight firearms controls in Britain and very tight controls on the sale of material needed to manufacture a bomb, and we have the most highly professionally trained firearms officers in the world, and we have the police and intelligence agencies working well together in making sure, best as we can, that the country is safe from attacks."
Mr Hague said al-Qaeda terrorism remained the main threat to the UK.
He said the current terrorism threat level to the UK was "substantial", meaning "there is a possibility of an attack and an attack without warning".
'Express sympathies' Association of Chief Police Officers president Sir Hugh Orde told the same programme that the police and government had already run a "major exercise" to prepare for an attack similar to that which took place in Norway.
He said this was done in order to "keep ahead of the game".
Flowers and candles have been placed outside the Royal Norwegian Embassy in London where its flag has been flying at half-mast.
An embassy spokesman said: "People have come to the embassy to express their sympathies. I read some of the notes they left and some were in Norwegian but most were in English."
0 comments:
Post a Comment