European security officials said in London today that a terror plot to wage Mumbai-style shooting sprees in Britain, France and Germany is still active and that sites in Pakistan — where the threat was intercepted two weeks ago — are being scoured for al-Qaida operatives. The plot was still in its early stages and not considered serious enough to raise the current terror threat level, officials said. Still, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was briefly evacuated Tuesday, the second time in the past week because of an unspecified threat, and police were on alert in Britain and France.
"This plot was in its embryonic stages," a British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "This one has preoccupied us more than others in the past few weeks — and it is still active — but it has not raised enough alarms to change our security threat level."
The announcement of the plot came ahead of tomorrows anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons being published in a Danish newspaper. It also came as Spanish authorities announced they had arrested a U.S. citizen of Algerian origin on suspicion of financing al-Qaidas North African affiliate. Mohamed Omar Debhi, 43, was arrested yesterday, although Spains Interior Ministry said that was not connected to the terror threat. He is suspected of laundering money and sending some of it to an associate in Algeria, Toufik Mizi, to be passed on to cells of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.