High-Alert Holidays

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The small, anxious-looking man who stood before a judge last week in London's Central Criminal Court hardly resembled the feral terrorist British police are linking him to. But Saajid Badat, 24, faces charges of having conspired with fellow Briton and convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001. And Badat is just one of 21 people detained by British police in the past three weeks under antiterrorism laws (some suspects have since been released).

All across Europe, in fact, it is a busy time in the war on terrorism. German police two weeks ago announced the arrest of an Iraqi, 29, identified only as Mohammed L. He is suspected of having dispatched a dozen radicals from Germany to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against U.S. troops. More than 5,000 police officers raided locations tied to 1,200 supporters of Germany-based Turkish militant Metin Kaplan. His Caliphate State group, which seeks to replace Turkey's secular government with an Islamic one, has been linked to terrorist plots there. Five people were arrested on weapons, drug and illegal-immigration charges. Meanwhile, Syria has handed over 22 suspects sought by Turkey in connection with the November Istanbul blasts. And French police rounded up four people accused of assisting an al-Qaeda operative last year as he passed through France on his way to London. Are police methodically rolling up terrorist networks--or frantically trying to stave off a suspected holiday attack?

Perhaps a little of both. "There are very big, very important police operations under way [in Britain]," notes a senior French antiterrorist official. "Concern is high that attack plots may be advancing swiftly. I've never seen the British quite this alarmed." British authorities are tight-lipped about their concerns, but the nation has been on its second highest terrorism alert for about a month now. "Given the number of operations by British police," says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, "they're apparently going after more than one plot and group." Three weeks ago, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said police had thwarted four separate plots "to actually cause mayhem and take life in this city."

Security sources say the most significant arrest so far is that of Badat. He is charged with "unlawfully and maliciously" conspiring with Reid "and others unknown to cause ... an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the United Kingdom or elsewhere." A handprint and hair found in Reid's shoe-bomb explosives did not belong to Reid, suggesting the bombs were prepared for him by an accomplice shortly before his failed attack. According to two U.S. law-enforcement officials, British investigators have made a forensic link between Badat and Reid. At the time of his arrest, Badat--whom neighbors described as a quiet student working to become an Islamic cleric--was in possession of a small quantity of explosives.