LONDON, England – For investigators, it all started with a jihadi Web site that flashed the name of a group calling itself “al Qaeda in Britain.”

From that new namesake there was, allegedly, a warning: Pull foreign troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and release Muslims from a London high security prison or we will assassinate British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair.

After months of investigation, four suspects have been arrested in England. They have not yet been charged.

At this point in proceedings, authorities are usually not very forthcoming on details, although police seem to maintain that so far they have no evidence that an actual plot was underway.

Was this a serious threat or was it an aspiration without any real consequence?

Trying to figure that out is always a dilemma for journalists. Do you give much voice to such a story - or are the threats so vacuous as to render them meaningless?

That’s the problem for the media but it reflects a crucial and decisive investigative process for prosecutors.

Not only must security officials decide how serious any threat actually was, and possibly alter security arrangements, they also face a problem in deciding how to charge any possible suspects.

If the threats were credible, the charges could reflect the grave possibility of a political assassination in the making.

We keep asking ourselves “How big was this?” just as police keep asking for more time to question the suspects so they can try to figure that out.

PLYMOUTH, England — Commander Peter Sparkes knows what he’s up against.
”Modern day piracy is very much not Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean,” he tells us from the bridge of the HMS Cumberland.

“They are generally Somalis operating in Skiff-like launches armed with AK-47’s and rocket propelled grenades.”

On the day we join them, Commander Sparkes and his crew are being put through their paces by the training arm of Britain’s Royal Navy. Currently in waters off the Navy’s base in Plymouth, southwest England, in a few weeks time the Cumberland will sail for the Gulf.
There, the ship will join up with a multinational coalition charged with maritime security operations.

That’s shorthand for a wide range of tasks including counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, combating human trafficking and piracy. All that in an area some two-and-a-half-million square miles in size.

Piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia are on the increase. Many go unreported but one that did make the headlines was in April this year. That’s when a group of 30 people were seized aboard a luxury yacht after gunmen overran their boat. They were freed only when French commandos stormed the yacht.

The pirates were shipped back to France for trial.
According to John Burnett, a leading authority on modern piracy, the situation is dangerously out of control. “The pay-offs are tremendous,” he says, “we’re talking two million dollars.”

And where once it was the ship or the cargo the pirates were after, now it’s the crew: Worth a King’s ransom, as Burnett puts it.

Storming a suspect vessel in the manner of the French commandos is not in the mandate of HMS Cumberland.  Operations like that require approval much higher up the chain of command. But they need to be prepared to do it. And on the day we joined them, that’s just what they were training for.

About half an hour after we put to sea, the ship’s crew spots a suspicious vessel. In reality, it’s a local boat owner who’s agreed to take part in the exercise. But as far as the Cumberland is concerned it’s a dhow in the Gulf of Oman. And they’re unhappy with what they’ve heard after making contact.

Commander Sparkes gives the order to board.
Minutes later we are speeding off to the dhow on two smalls ribs with about a dozen men from the ship. After securing the area around the dhow we board. The crew are interrogated, the boat is searched. There could be drugs on board, or an illegal weapons consignment.

In the event, the search turns up nothing untoward, but then this is just day one of the training. Later exercises will see the crew face an armed response on the dhow and they’ll be forced to deal with it.
”We’ll have to respond to a range of threats,” says Commander Sparkes, looking forward to deployment into theatre later in the year, “and we’re ready to do so.”

As they like to say on board HMS Cumberland: Train hard, fight easy.

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