Be Very Skeptical

Five key questions for anti-terror investigation

· Arrested group were tracked for nearly a year
· Pakistani security services helped watch suspects

Nine days ago Paul Stephenson, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told the public his officers had thwarted a plot to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

It was an apocalyptic scenario challenged at the time by journalists, who forced an admission that what was meant by these words was "on a scale never before witnessed in Britain", reducing the potential death toll from tens of thousands to hundreds. Today 23 suspects, two of them women, are being held on suspicion of plotting to commit terrorist offences. While police interrogate them, there are many unanswered questions.

Remember what a load of hot air the 'ricin plot' was a few years ago.

The media went on about a 'ricin factory' and that we were all going to die and in the end nothing was found.

The suspects themseleves last year were aquitted conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in relation to the ricin plot. The CPS also abandoned plans for a retrial of Bourgass on the conspiracy to commit murder charge.

Either way its just another cock up along with the shooting of Charles De Mendez and the fiasco of Forrest Gate.

Expect that once the 28 days are up a small news story will appear on the back pages of the British newspapers saying 'the suspects were found to have no connection to the terror plot'