This is serious:

British police arrested a man before Christmas who was suspected of preparing himself for a suicide bombing and who had links to Al Qaeda, British newspaper The Sunday Times said.

The paper, which did not give a source, said the man in his late twenties was arrested after leaving notes to his family saying he planned to "martyr" himself.

The paper said he was an Algerian asylum seeker.

The man had also shaved off all his body hair, a religious act often observed by would-be suicide bombers so that they are "clean" before entering heaven, the newspaper said.

"I hope you treat me as a hero and a martyr," the man wrote to his sister and mother.

The letter was discovered by police on a raid at his home, which the paper said was in the north of England.

British police declined to comment on the story.

I know what the idiotarians will say, something to the effect of "There's not enough evidence that he was actually going to bomb anyone" or some other such drivel. Good work by the Brits on stopping this. How many terrorist attacks have been stopped? It's impossible to know, but I imagine hundreds have been avoided by the vigilance of the coalition partners and security measures that are in place.

Update: Here's more:

Mahdjoub's arrest was a minor victory in a major war being fought, bitterly and secretly, in cities from London to Warsaw, from Madrid to Oslo. It pits the best investigative officers in Europe against a fanatical network of men dedicated to the prosecution of jihad both in Europe and overseas. It is a war security officials know they cannot afford to lose - and that they know they will be fighting for the foreseeable future.

Previously seen as a relative backwater in the war on terror, Europe is now in the frontline. 'It's trench warfare,' said one security expert. 'We keep taking them out. They keep coming at us. And every time they are coming at us harder.'

An investigation by The Observer has revealed the extent of the new networks that Islamic militants have been able to build in Europe since 11 September - despite the massive effort against them. The militants' operations go far beyond the few individuals' activities that sparked massive security alerts over Christmas and the new year. Interviews with senior counter-intelligence officials, secret recordings of conversations between militants and classified intelligence briefings have shown that militants have been able to reconstitute, and even enlarge, their operations in Europe in the past two years. The intelligence seen by The Observer reveals that:

? Britain is still playing a central logistical role for the militants, with extremists, including the alleged mastermind of last year's bombings in Morocco, and a leader of an al-Qaeda cell, regularly using the UK as a place to hide. Other radical activists are using Britain for fundraising, massive credit card fraud, the manufacture of false documents and planning. Recruitment is also continuing. In one bugged conversation, a senior militant describes London as 'the nerve centre' and says that his group has 'Albanians, Swiss [and] British' recruits. He needs people who are 'intelligent and highly educated', he says and implies that the UK can, and does, supply them.

I tend to agree with Tim Blair that the next major attack may well be in Europe.