British police say they have broken up a domestic plot to kidnap a British Muslim soldier, murder him and post the images on the Internet.
Eight suspects were arrested in pre-dawn raids in Birmingham, England on Wednesday, with a ninth arrested later.
Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw, of West Midlands Police announced the ninth arrest at a Wednesday morning news conference. He added: "The threat from terrorism remains very real."
No other details were given about the arrest.
Shaw confirmed the eight other men were arrested at eight residences across the Birmingham area by the counter-terrorism unit and other area police forces.
Those residences, along with four commercial premises, have been secured and are being searched by officers -- a process that could take days or weeks.
Shaw warned that investigators are only in the "foothills of a very major investigation," and said officers were actively seeking help from the community, in particular from Muslims.
The suspects are alleged to have been "planning to abduct a British soldier, hold him hostage, torture him, brutally behead him on camera and then ... (show it) on the Internet," said Sajjan M. Gohel, Director of International Security for the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation.
CTV's London Bureau Chief Tom Kennedy confirmed that the targeted individual was a 20-year-old British soldier of Muslim descent who had served in Afghanistan.
"The feeling was that the target would be some type of a symbolic target," he said.
Gohel said the suspects probably targeted the man to create "ethnic and social tensions" within the Muslim community.
The man was told about the plot by police and placed under watch. There are about 330 Muslims in the 180,000-strong British military.
Other Birmingham raids
Birmingham has been the site of several major terror raids in the past two years, specifically since suicide bombers killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005.
Raids in the area were also conducted last summer after a plot that involved using liquid explosives to blow up as many as 10 flights between Britain and the United States was uncovered.
Birmingham is also the hometown of Britain's first Muslim soldier to be killed in Afghanistan last year. Since the death of Cpl. Jabron Hashmi, 24, militant Islamist websites have denounced him as a traitor.
Kidnappings of Westerners have become a routine tactic of terrorists in Iraq who often release videos of hostages being beheaded.
British hostage Kenneth Bigley was beheaded in Iraq in 2004. The militants who killed him captured the gruesome act on video.
If the alleged plotters were successful, such an act would have marked a relatively new front in domestic terrorism in the U.K.
"I think we are seeing what is being termed by some people as 'blowback'. That is: tactics that are used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan being turned now to the UK," said terrorism expert John Gearson.
But Gohel said a similar plot has been carried out in Britain before. Strangely, he said the arrests were made in the same part of Birmingham where, in 1984, an Indian diplomat was abducted, brutally tortured and then killed.
"There's probably no connection but it's interesting that it happened in the same place in Birmingham," he said.
With a report from CTV's Tom Kennedy and files from The Associated Press
If the alleged plotters were successful, such an act would have marked a relatively new front in domestic terrorism in the U.K.
"I think we are seeing what is being termed by some people as 'blowback'. That is: tactics that are used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan being turned now to the UK," said terrorism expert John Gearson.
But Gohel said a similar plot has been carried out in Britain before. Strangely, he said the arrests were made in the same part of Birmingham where, in 1984, an Indian diplomat was abducted, brutally tortured and then killed.
"There's probably no connection but it's interesting that it happened in the same place in Birmingham," he said.
With a report from CTV's Tom Kennedy and files from The Associated Press
If the alleged plotters were successful, such an act would have marked a relatively new front in domestic terrorism in the U.K.
"I think we are seeing what is being termed by some people as 'blowback'. That is: tactics that are used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan being turned now to the UK," said terrorism expert John Gearson.
But Gohel said a similar plot has been carried out in Britain before. Strangely, he said the arrests were made in the same part of Birmingham where, in 1984, an Indian diplomat was abducted, brutally tortured and then killed.
"There's probably no connection but it's interesting that it happened in the same place in Birmingham," he said.
With a report from CTV's Tom Kennedy and files from The Associated Press
