Police are still viewing CCTV from 7-7, it emerged during the first anniversary of the London suicide bombs.
Officers have taken 13,353 witness statements, there are over 29,500 exhibits, and more than 6,000 hours of CCTV footage, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, Head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch. He spoke of police since July 2005 disrupting three, and probably four attack plans in the
UK, some involving explosions or poisons.
He said: “The very nature of terrorism is such that it is intended to frighten, to intimidate. The terrorists want to create an atmosphere in which we lose our sense of proportion, in which the British public are not sure who or what to believe. As a police officer, as an investigator, I honestly believe that an open and informed public debate is one of the strongest weapons we have in our armoury. I have to say that it sometimes feels as if the public are not well informed about the reality of the threat, or indeed the work that is being done on their behalf to try to keep them safe. Sometimes that is because of the secrecy that is inevitable when dealing with global terrorist threats, and with secret sources of information. At the same time, there are some things that we would like to be able to tell the public, but can’t for very good legal reasons. With terrorist cases taking anything up to two years or longer to come to court, it means that the public are unaware of many important things that have happened in this country. That is a pity, and it means we must guard against blame, recrimination, speculation or myths taking the place of solid public information.”
