Woman arrested in London anti-terror operation

LONDON: A 22-year-old woman is in custody at a south-east London police station after she was detained at a residential address in Hackney, east London, on Saturday morning.

She was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, a spokesman for the Metropolitan police said.

The arrest, by officers from the Met's counter-terrorism command, follows six others made on Thursday by counter-terrorist officers and MI5, in a planned operation, following weeks of surveillance.

The arrests were not initiated as a result of any imminent attack but after counter-terror investigators weighed up the evidence they had gathered so far against the suspects, and the perceived risks of leaving them at liberty for longer with the Olympic Games on the horizon.

Those arrested on Thursday included three brothers in the Olympic area of Stratford, east London.

One of the brothers, a 24-year-old, was shot with a Taser when he was arrested with his siblings at their home.

Scotland Yard confirmed that one of the three siblings had worked as a community support officer for the Metropolitan police between May 2007 and September 2009.

In Ealing, west London, Richard Dart, also known as Salahuddin al-Britani, a Muslim convert from Dorset, was seized on the street by police as part of the same operation.