The security services believe they have stopped an Islamist suicide bomb plot to assassinate the Prime Minister.

Two Muslim men are suspected of conspiring to attack Downing Street armed with an improvised bomb, suicide vest and knives.

Investigators suspect the pair wanted to detonate a bomb disguised as a bag. They would then attempt to kill Theresa May armed with a suicide vest, pepper spray and knife in the aftermath.

Naa'imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, and Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday charged with planning terror attacks.

Rahman, 20, from north London, is accused of planning to bomb Downing Street's security gates and then attack the Prime Minister in the ensuing chaos.

The security services believe they have stopped an Islamist suicide bomb plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. She is pictured in Number 10 today

The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, yesterday briefed Cabinet ministers on the unprecedented terrorist threat facing the country (file photo)

Two Muslim men are suspected of conspiring to attack Downing Street armed with an improvised bomb, suicide vest and knives

The alleged conspiracy was foiled after a joint operation by Scotland Yard, West Midlands Police and MI5. Security chiefs stepped in amid fears the men were preparing to launch an attack, arresting them at gunpoint.

However, although they appear to have been inspired by Islamic State it does not appear they were able to obtain or build any explosives.

The smashed plot highlights the extreme threat still faced by the UK in a year blighted by terrorist atrocities which claimed 36 lives.

Counter-terrorist chiefs said it was the ninth foiled plot since March as hundreds of terrorist suspects remain under investigation.

The security service and police have thwarted 22 terrorist plots in the past four years and there are more than 500 live investigations ongoing. Police chiefs are struggling to handle more than 3,000 subjects of interest, along with a growing pool of more than 20,000 individuals identified during terrorist inquiries.

The festive season has seen some events, particularly Christmas markets and high-profile events, taking extreme precautions. Police fear a lone-wolf extremist could mount a ‘copycat’ attack similar to that on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz Christmas market last year.

The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, yesterday briefed Cabinet ministers on the unprecedented terrorist threat facing the country.

Mr Parker has said the threat facing the UK was at the ‘highest tempo’ seen in his 34-year career.

A week after the Westminster Bridge attack in March, police arrested Ummariyat Mirza, 21, who pleaded guilty to researching and plotting a terrorist attack using a hunting knife

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘Mr Parker said that nine terrorist attacks had been prevented in the past year. There have been five attacks that got through, four of which are related to Islamist terrorism.’ Mrs May thanked Mr Parker and MI5 for their ‘tireless work’ tackling terrorism.

Some of the foiled terror attacks have never been made public for security reasons, although the majority have.

A week after the Westminster Bridge attack in March, police arrested Ummariyat Mirza, 21, who pleaded guilty to researching and plotting a terrorist attack using a hunting knife.

Days later, MI5 and police foiled an attack when they arrested a man found carrying a ‘bag of knives’ in Whitehall.

Khalid Mohammed Omar Ali, 27, was charged with an offence that involved ‘purchasing knives and travelling to London’. He denies the charge and is awaiting trial.

Also in April, police smashed an alleged female terror cell, believed to be Britain’s first all-female terrorist hit squad. Rizlaine Boular, 21, and her mother Mina Dich, 43, are alleged to have plotted an atrocity with Khawla Barghouthi, 20, in coded chats about ‘cakes’.

The trio are facing trial along with a 17-year-old girl accused of plotting a separate terrorist attack on a British museum after she married an IS fighter on Skype.

Khalid Mohammed Omar Ali, 27, was charged with an offence that involved ‘purchasing knives and travelling to London’. He denies the charge and is awaiting trial

Rizlaine Boular, 21, and her mother Mina Dich, 43, are alleged to have plotted an atrocity with Khawla Barghouthi, 20, in coded chats about ‘cakes’

In May, Umar Ahmed Haque, Muhammad Abid and Abuthaher Mamun, from east London, were arrested as part of an investigation by MI5 and the police. Haque and Mamun allegedly planned to use a vehicle in a terror attack. Haque was also accused of having a list of possible targets across the capital.

Police reportedly found a large knife in his car.

In June, a teenager from south Wales was arrested on the day of a Justin Bieber concert and subsequently found guilty of plotting a terror attack in Cardiff.

The boy, from Rhondda Cynon Taf, was found guilty of five terror-related charges at Birmingham Crown Court. It was said he had planned an IS-inspired attack at the pop concert, just a month after the Manchester Arena bombing.

In August, a man armed with a 4ft sword was arrested outside Buckingham Palace as he repeatedly shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’.

Official: Westminster jihadi DID view web terror videos before attacks

By Ian Dury, Home Affairs Editor for the Daily Mail

Tech giants are again under fire after it was revealed Khalid Masood browsed Google’s video platform for terror videos, including suicide attacks

The Westminster Bridge terrorist watched jihadist propaganda on YouTube three days before the atrocity, it emerged yesterday.

Tech giants are again under fire after it was revealed Khalid Masood browsed Google’s video platform for terror videos, including suicide attacks, before launching his car and knife rampage on March 22.

Yesterday, in a victory for the Daily Mail, YouTube finally admitted it was facing ‘serious issues’ over protecting vulnerable young people from watching vile material.

And Google has been forced to hire significantly more workers to comb through its content so shocking and inappropriate material – including extremist videos – can be deleted. By next year the number of employees will hit 10,000.

A row over the responsibilities of social media and internet firms flared up after Islamic State-inspired fanatic Masood murdered five – including PC Keith Palmer – and injured more than 50 in an attack outside Parliament.

The following day, the Mail revealed that vile terror handbooks encouraging jihadis to mount a car attack before going on a stabbing rampage – the method used by the killer – were available online. There was also anger that encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp were refusing to help security services decode communications. Masood used the app three minutes before embarking on the slaughter.

Details of his attack were published in an internal review of the police and MI5’s handling of the four terrorist attacks to strike Britain this year.

The 52-year-old was known to police and MI5 for association with extremists but he was a ‘closed’ subject of interest at the time of the atrocity, meaning he was no longer under active investigation.

Tech giants are again under fire after it was revealed Khalid Masood browsed Google’s video platform for terror videos, including suicide attacks, before launching his car and knife rampage on March 22

The report, by the Government’s former terror watchdog David Anderson QC, said: ‘No intelligence was being gathered on him, and neither MI5 nor the police had any reason to anticipate the attack.’

Born Adrian Russell Elms in 1964, he grew up in Kent and changed his name to Khalid Masood in 2005, having converted to Islam while in prison five years earlier.

Before the attack, both the police and MI5 had some limited – and largely historic – knowledge of Masood.

He was convicted seven times between 1983 and 2003 for offences ranging from criminal damage to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assault on police and unlawful wounding.

Masood came on to MI5’s radar in April 2004 when a telephone number linked to him appeared in the contacts list of a terrorist suspect over plans to detonate bombs in the UK.

In 2009, spies believed he could be an individual in Saudi Arabia who was helping jihadis travel to an Al Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan for terror training.

Before the attack, both the police and MI5 had some limited – and largely historic – knowledge of Masood. An officer is seen laying flowers at the National Police Memorial on The Mall in London

Despite it turning out that he was not that individual, Masood was placed under active investigation as a ‘subject of interest’ between February 2010 and October 2012 while security chiefs assessed whether he posed a threat.

From then until 2016, he associated with extremists linked to the banned terrorist group Al-Muhajiroun, but this was not sufficient to warrant re-opening an investigation into him. The Anderson report also reveals how, in the days before his attack, Masood conducted reconnaissance of Westminster Bridge in person and online, and browsed YouTube for terror videos.

In the Commons yesterday. Home Secretary Amber Rudd called on web giants to do more to take down extremism, including when jihadis look at how to buy bombs. She said Google should ‘invest in machine learning and artificial intelligence so material is taken down before it is seen’.

In a briefing in London, Mr Anderson questioned whether tech giants had ‘gone far enough’ to remove extremist content from websites.

Google yesterday apologised for some of the grotesque content on its YouTube Kids platform. Spokesman Malik Ducard admitted the video platform was ‘facing serious issues’

He said: ‘If you use Google’s search function for the Islamic State magazine you will find on the first page of your search a pictorial description of how best to use a knife to kill somebody, and how best to use a truck to mow somebody down.

‘You could say a determined person is going to track that down anyhow but does it really have to be the first page of your search results?’

Google yesterday apologised for some of the grotesque content on its YouTube Kids platform. Spokesman Malik Ducard admitted the video platform was ‘facing serious issues’.

‘I know that in light of the news stories that we’ve all seen in recent weeks, YouTube has more to do to fulfil [its] mission,’ he said.

‘The complex threats that we face today are evolving and sophisticated… still, the complexity of these issues is no excuse and we are deeply sorry. I can’t emphasise enough how seriously we take the issue of child safety across all of YouTube.’

Manchester bomb could have been avoided By Richard Marsden for the Daily Mail Counter-terrorism officials might have prevented suicide bomber Salman Abedi blowing himself up at a concert if intelligence had been given greater priority Spies missed crucial opportunities to thwart the Manchester terror attack which killed 22 people, an official report has found. Counter-terrorism officials might have prevented suicide bomber Salman Abedi blowing himself up at a concert if intelligence had been given greater priority. Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the Commons that the jihadist atrocity on May 22 could have been avoided ‘had the cards fallen differently’. It was also revealed that the ringleader of the Islamist terror gang which brought bloodshed to central London on June 3 was being investigated by MI5 and police for his extremist views. Khuram Butt – one of three men who slaughtered eight people in a van and knife rampage – had been on the authorities’ radar for two years. The shocking findings were contained in a report by David Anderson QC, a former terrorism law reviewer asked by the Home Secretary to audit internal MI5 and police reviews into four incidents beween March and June. The security services faced serious questions following the strikes at Westminster Bridge, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, which together killed 36 people and wounded 200. Three of the six terrorists were known to MI5, the report revealed. Khalid Masood, who attacked Westminster, and Abedi were former ‘subjects of interest’ – but no longer under active investigation. Abedi, 22, detonated a home-made suicide bomb outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena Abedi, 22, detonated a home-made suicide bomb outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. He had first become an MI5 ‘subject of interest’ in 2014, but it turned out he had been mistaken for someone else and his case was closed. It was reopened the following year on mistaken intelligence that he had contacted an Islamic State figure in Libya. But although his case remained closed from that point, the report said Abedi ‘continued to be referenced from time to time in intelligence gathered for other purposes’. Mr Anderson said: ‘On two separate occasions in the months prior to the attack, intelligence was received by MI5 whose significance was not fully appreciated at the time. In retrospect, the intelligence can be seen to have been highly relevant to the planned attack.’ He said the security services’ decision to disregard the intelligence was, with hindsight, ‘wrong’. He had first become an MI5 ‘subject of interest’ in 2014, but it turned out he had been mistaken for someone else and his case was closed. Floral tributes for the victims are pictured But he concluded that it was ‘unknowable’ whether opening a fresh investigation could have thwarted Abedi’s deadly plans. In response to the findings, Miss Rudd told MPs the blame for the attacks ‘lies squarely’ with the terrorists. But Steve Howe, whose wife Alison, 45, died in the attack, told Channel 4 News: ‘It’s sort-of a cover up from the fact that everything could have been done a lot better.’ The two other attackers who had been on MI5’s radar were Butt, 27, the leader of the London Bridge attack, and Khalid Masood on Westminster Bridge. The full internal reviews, which are highly classified and run to more than 1,100 pages, contain 126 recommendations. Advertisement



