Thousands of British Muslims are being watched by police and MI5 under suspicion of possible terrorist involvement, a Scotland Yard chief has disclosed.
Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch, said they were being looked at in the belief that they might be involved directly or indirectly in supporting terrorism.
His estimate was given in an interview for a BBC2 documentary, al-Qa'eda: Time to Talk, which investigates British Muslim connections with the terrorist network and will to be shown tomorrow.
Mr Clarke said: "What we've learnt since 9/11 is that the threat is not something that's simply coming from overseas into the United Kingdom. What we've learnt, and what we've seen all too graphically and all too murderously, is that we have a threat which is being generated here within the United Kingdom."
When asked roughly how many Muslims were being looked at, Mr Clarke said: "I don't want to go down the numbers game, I don't think it's helpful … all I can say is that our knowledge is increasing and certainly in terms of broad description, the numbers of people who we have to be interested in, are into the thousands."http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1527844/Yard-is-watching-thousands-of-terror-suspects.html