British police may have thwarted a possible terrorist attack or other major crime on the day of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's funeral it emerged yesterday.
A few hours after central London was brought to a standstill last Tuesday by several thousand people lining the route of the Queen Mother's funeral procession from Westminster Abbey, anti-terrorist police carried out a controlled explosion on a car with Northern Ireland number plates close to London Bridge. Inside the boot, police are believed to have found empty fertilizer bags and architects' drawings of key buildings in the City of London.
The blue-grey Ford Granada car, which was being driven by a white man in his twenties and had a white female passenger, had been flagged down by a police officer at one of London's "ring of steel" security points close to London Bridge at about 8 p.m. The car approached the police officer but then drove off. However, using CCTV camera footage police later found the car abandoned in Mincing Lane, on the north side of the Thames.
Senior anti-terrorism officers have been warning of further dissident republican bomb attacks in London for several months. But City Police, who are liaising with the anti-terrorist branch during the investigation, said yesterday it was too early to say whether the discovery of the car and the activities of the driver pointed to dissident republican activity.
"We cannot say this is linked to Irish terrorism, it may have been other crime. It is still too early to say," a spokeswoman for City Police told The Irish Times.
Detective Chief Inspector, Mr Steve Eastwood, appealed to the public to come forward if they saw the car being abandoned or if they had any information about the driver or the passenger. Police said the car had slight damage to the front bumper on the driver's side and the numberplate was IDZ 4669. The driver was wearing a dark shirt with a light coloured top and the woman had light or fair hair tied in a pony-tail.
Police believe the so-called "Real IRA" is responsible for up to 10 bombing incidents in Britain over the last 18 months. Fertilizer car bombs exploded outside the BBC Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush, west London, in March last year and in Ealing in August.