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Source: The Courier-Mail
With friends ... Mr Blair is in Italy, where he will meet Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi / AP
'Plot' to kill Tony Blair thwarted
By Ben English in London
17 August 2004
BRITISH anti-terror authorities have foiled a suspected al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Police swooped on two Lithuanian asylum seekers believed to be spying on Mr Blair's home in his constituency in England's north.
The men were caught with hi-tech surveillance equipment less than a kilometre from Mr Blair's countryside home.
Sources said the pair raised alarm bells because they displayed the characteristics of al-Qaeda spying behaviour.
Using a stolen car fitted with false number plates, they filmed roads and traffic surrounding their alleged target and were carrying a highly-detailed map of the country area of Trimdon in County Durham.
"To dismiss these as nothing more than a couple of wandering foreigners out to see the British countryside is stretching it a bit," a security source told Britain's Daily Express newspaper.
Intelligence officials are reportedly working on the theory that the men had been hired by intermediaries to keep higher-ranking members of the terror cell at arms length.
"This is classic al-Qaeda behaviour, a textbook example of one way the terrorists would gather information about a possible target," the security source said.
"Video equipment like that wasn't normally the kind of gear you'd expect a hard-up asylum seeker to be carrying about.."
After their arrest, the Lithuanians were deported. Police said they were satisfied no security issues were involved.
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