Olympics 2012 may be the bigest risk of the decade-British Security Minister Alan West

LONDON:

London faces the largest security challenge since World War II when it hosts the 2012 Olympics, British security minister Alan West said on Friday.

West told a London conference that the British capital will almost certainly be at a higher risk of a terrorist attack as an estimated 15,000 athletes, 14,000 coaches and officials and 20,000 media workers arrive for the games.

He said the country's threat level will likely rise to severe, the second-highest rating on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is considered highly likely.

"We are not complacent. We do not underestimate the scale of the Olympics challenge," West told the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

West, a former head of Britain's navy and defense intelligence staff, said the event would be "possibly the greatest security challenge the UK has faced since the Second World War."

Since 2001, Britain has invested heavily in anti-terrorism measures, increasing the size of domestic spy agency MI5 and raising the country's security budget to 3.5 billion pounds ($6 billion).

The minister said a 600 million pound ($1billion) fund has been set aside specifically for Olympic security.

West said work since the July 2005 transit network attacks in London, which killed 52 passengers and four suicide bombers, had "made the nation safer, but we are not safe, the threat is still there."

The London bombings came the day after the British capital was awarded the 2012 Olympics.

West said plans to secure the Olympics would reflect changing tactics used by terrorists.

He pointed to the use of boats to launch attacks last November which killed 166 people in Mumbai, India, and methods deployed in Lahore, Pakistan, in March in a gun assault on the Sri Lankan national cricket team.

Britain has installed barriers to defend against car bombs at most sports stadiums, transport hubs and shopping malls, and provided new guidelines on protecting crowded spaces. During the Olympics, police speed boats will patrol the River Thames.

West said that, despite the likely threats, he is confident in plans to secure the London games. If medals were awarded for security planning, Britain ``would be on top of the podium wearing a gold,'' he said.

American terrorist David Headley visited India and Left for Pakistan Before 26/11 attacks in Mumbai

NEW DELHI:

Suspected American terrorist David Headley had stayed in a hotel in the national capital just months before the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.

According to the passport details of Headley, he had visited the national capital and Mumbai during April last year. He had then left for Pakistan.

Headley was arrested by the FBI for suspected links with the banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had carried out the Mumbai carnage last year that left about 180 people dead.

Sources said Central security agencies are also investigating Headley's suspected links to terror outfit Indian Mujhaideen, which had carried out a series of bomb attacks across the country, including in Rajasthan and Delhi, that left over 170 people dead.

Home Minister P Chidambaram had said yesterday that besides Headley, the National Investigating Agency had registered a case against his Canadian accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

The duo was booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and for conspiring to wage war against the country.

Maintaining that Headley had visited India several times before 26/11 and once after the Mumbai terror strikes, Chidambaram had said, "We are conducting investigations in the cities he visited to find out whom he met and what he did."

The Mumbai attack last November left 183 persons dead. A top Home Ministry official has claimed that the investigators had enough evidence to show Headley's link with LeT and the Government is all set to produce the documents before a US court in January next and press for his extradition to India.

"We will press for his extradition to India with the evidence," the official said.

The investigators were now trying to find out whether Headley and his accomplice Rana, also arrested in the US, were involved in the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai and whether handlers of the duo and Mumbai attackers were the same.

ISI Office Hit By Bombers, Killing 20 People

ISLAMABAD:

Suicide bombers on Friday struck Pakistan's powerful ISI hitting its operational headquarters in northwestern city of Peshawar and a police station nearby in Bannu, killing 20 people, including seven personnel of the spy agency.

The strike on the spy agency overseeing Pakistan's anti-terror campaign and on the police station left 85 people wounded and came as 30,000 troops were pressing Taliban and foreign militants in their stronghold in lawless Waziristan.

A suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden truck into the gate of the ISI office within the cantonment of Peshawar city at 6.40 am, killing at least 12 people and injuring 60 others, police said.

The bomber's car was packed with about 200 kg of explosives, IGP Malik Naveed Khan told reporters.

Though the well-armed guards opened fire on the car to stop it, the attacker rammed his vehicle into the three-storey building reducing it to rubble, police said.

The blast brought down the front and middle portion of the building and its sound was so loud it could be heard up to 20 km away. Bodies lay strewen on the road and police fired in the air to keep the onlookers away till the bodies were taken to hospital.

Just an hour later, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden mini truck near the main police station at Bakakhel in Bannu district of NWFP, killing eight persons and injuring 25 others.

Car Bomber Strikes Outside the US base

KABUL:

A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of civilian vehicles outside a US military base in Kabul early on Friday, wounding three Afghans and causing several casualties among foreigners, police said. The head of criminal investigations for Kabul police, Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, said 3-4 foreign casualties had been taken from the scene by Western troops, but he could give no details of the extent of their wounds.

A damaged white civilian vehicle could be seen at the debris-strewn blast site on a main road about 100 metres (yards) from Camp Phoenix, a large US military base also used by troops from other NATO countries near the airport. Witnesses said a second civilian vehicle that was destroyed in the blast had been removed, while US troops in armoured vehicles blocked off the site.

"We were having breakfast when we heard a huge bang. All the glass was shattered," said Abdul Jamil, a worker at a petrol station across the street from the site. He said he believed several foreigners had been killed inside the vehicle that had ben destroyed. Sgt. Kevin Bell, a spokesman for the US and NATO-led forces, confirmed a blast but gave no further details. Violence in Afghanistan this year has reached the worst levels of the eight-year-old war, and militants have staged a number of attacks in the capital in recent months.

Attack on Indian's an you will be behind the bar's for 6 Year's--Australian Court To Australian's

MELBOURNE:

A court here has sentenced an Australian to over six years in jail for attacking an Indian taxi driver with knife, an incident that led to hundreds of Indian cabbies blocking the Melbourne streets last year.

Justice Elizabeth Curtain sentenced Parrish Chales to six-and-a-half years in jail, saying the stabbing was "random, unprovoked and frenzied" and the fact that the 45-year-old attacker had a hunting knife hidden in his pants showed a degree of "premeditation".

The judge said the unprovoked and unexpected assault on 23-year-old Jalvinder Singh was terrifying and left Singh with ongoing mental and physical injuries that would change his life, media reports said on Friday.

Charles stabbed Singh five times from behind with a hunting knife and the victim crawled bleeding from his cab and was found in the gutter hours later by a passing truck driver in April last year.

Charles drove off in the cab but crashed it nearby. The crime shocked the city and led to a mass blockade of Flinders and Swanston streets in central Melbourne by taxi drivers for 22 hours.

Victorian Government had to then agree to safety screens in cabs for drivers who wanted them, and pre-payment of fares to become mandatory at night.