UK terror threat raised to 'severe', Home Secretary announces

[Jan Klimkowski]

UK terror threat raised to 'severe', Home Secretary announces

The UK's terror threat level has been raised from substantial to severe, Home Secretary Alan Johnson has announced.

By Andrew Hough, and Heidi Blake
Published: 8:37PM GMT 22 Jan 2010

The announcement means that an attack is now "highly likely".

Mr Johnson said that although the threat had increased there was no intelligence to suggest an attack was imminent.

The Home Secretary was not specific about the threat, but indicated it was not linked to the Detroit bombing on Christmas Day.

"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has today raised the threat to the UK from international terrorism from substantial to severe,” he said.

"This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely, but I should stress that there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent.

"JTAC keeps the threat level under constant review and makes its judgments based on a broad range of factors, including the intent and capabilities of international terrorist groups in the UK and overseas."

He said that authorities were “not being specific about this, we are not gong to be specific about this”.

“In his statement to Parliament on security and counter terrorism earlier this week, the Prime Minister said that the first and most important duty of government is the protection and security of the British people,” he said.

“We still face a real and serious threat to the UK from international terrorism so I would urge the public to remain vigilant and carry on reporting suspicious events to the appropriate authorities and to support the police and security services in their continuing efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity.

"We have a very focused counter terrorism facility in this country and the public should be reassured by that."

He added: The fact is we keep this under review and moving to this different threat level means we have to be more alert and it means that an attack has moved to the level of being likely, but we have absolutely no intelligence to suggest that it is imminent."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/t...unces.html

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