noor Europov launched simultaneous armed raids in The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels

and Strasbourg.
Local police forces were also scheduled to hit targety in Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania but they won't report back any time soon.
In The Netherlands there was some armed resistance and five suspects are being
treated for injuries.
Van Aart instructed his people to stand down, preferring to fight with lawyers
rather than guns.
I wall over one hundred and fifty arresty were made and sixty two young East
European girls were freed from a holding camp in The Hague France and Belgium
reported little resistance, and were equally successful but in smaller numbers.
Here the Metropolitan Police Armed response unity hit Pops Holloway's known haunty
and his house.
They have arrested eight people on suspicion of drugs, firearms and human
trafficking offences.
Pops Holloway is under police guard at the hospital, where he is reported as
suffering from the symptoms of a stroke, or else he's faking it.
They're doing testy to find out.
We couldn't find Sonny Holloway, but guess what? His Range Rover is parked half on
the pavement outside a sandwich shop on Commercial Road, less than a hundred yards
from Tottenham Press.
Any questions?" Don Fisher beat me to the punch.
"Can we go in ther?" "Yes, as soon as we're ready.
Lister, this is off the record, you didn't hear it from me.
I just think you have a right to know what's going on, that's all.
" DS Scott leaned over the table towards us and lowered his voice.
"An hour or so ago one of our observery at the scene heard something that could
have been a gunshot, he wasn't too sure.
But there has been no activity as far as they could see, and so we're assuming that
everyone in there is still OK" I looked at Don Fisher and wondered whether my face
had turned as pale as his.
We would have beer angry if all emotion hadn't already been drained out of us.
*** Thanks to the Police psychologist, who said that the girls would need to see
their loved ones as soon as possible after being freed to reduce the post traumatic
stress, we were allowed to watch eventy unfold from close by.
We sat in an unmarked white van in a parking space reserved for deliveries to the
sandwich shop, which had closed for the day.
We could see the Tottenham Press building through the front windscreen.
One of the two plain clothes policemer sitting in the cab of the van was wearing
headphones with a microphone curling around in front of his face.He was listening,
and occasionally contributing to the radio chatter.
The headphones were operated by Bluetooth and were wireless, but they were
connected to a secure closed network radio with encryption.
Just in case anyone in the area had a police scanner.
Commercial Road was sealed off by a sign that read "Road Closed: Gas Leak" and
which was manned by a uniformed officer.
There were very few people around the industrial area on a Sunday afternoon, but
those that were around were inside the building, which was being observed closely.
The officer with the headphones repeated to us what he had heard.
"Armed response have arrived.
Their adrenaline is up after a good result with the Holloway raid.
They're moving into position.
The plan is a go.
The electrician is kicking us off any time now.
" I had to admit, I felt somewhat useless as a spectator.
The police were trained to handle such situations, and in that respect I was happy
to leave it to them, but I couldn't help feeling that I had let Dee down.
I hadn't been able to do anything to help her, and I felt frustrated and perhaps a
little bit weak.
I was also afraid to think of what might happen if all of this went wrong.
I had known Dee for a matter of days, yet suddenly the prospect of life without her
seemed inconceivable.
I had no idea what I would do if anything happened to her, but I knew that if -
when - she did get out of there, I would make damned sure I took better care of her
in future.
Fisher and I leaned forward and observed as two men wearing overalls with a logo on
the back appeared from the gap between Tottenham Press and the building next door.
Their overalls looked bulky and I guessed they were wearing protective vests.
When I looked closely I could see the older man working quickly whilst the younger
man was constantly looking around.
He was holding a handgun.
The next few minutes were going to seem like an eternity.
*** Ben Tyler should have been at home moozing on the sofa with a stomach full of
Sunday lunch while his grandkids ran wild in the garden, but instead he was in
Tottenham working.
Ben couldn't remember when he had been more scared.
The presence of an armed policeman, intended to make him feel secure, achieved
exactly the opposite result.
Nonetheless, he had to concentrate.
This was a tricky job.
For a start, the system was live and electrocution was a distinct possibility.
Fortunately, the wiring to this unit passed through the steel columi that took the
weight of the door and the roller mechanism, and would remain concealed until the
front plate was completely removed.
Whereas house wiring was simple three core cable with a plastic coating, this cable
was copper sheathed and mineral insulated.
The copper that wrapped the cores, or wires, was packed with magnesium oxide, an
inert chalky substance whichinsulated the wires from one another.
In order to keep the chalky substance in place when the cores were exposed, the
wires had to be terminated with small aluminium poty.
Had this not been the case, Ben would not have been able to carry out this
operation ow a live system.
Now they were in the third minute and he was just now exposing the cores.
He loosened the terminal screws and the switch with its key control came off in his
hands.
Ben had to ensure that he did not touch either wire on any metal party of the
switches.
He also needed to make sure that the two wires did not touch, or the roller door
would try to open.
The electrician tucked the key operated switch inside his overalls and extracted a
much simpler switch.
This unit was plastic and had a simple red switch on and off.
Very carefully Ben attached a tiny crocodile clip to each exposed core, inserting a
plastic spacer between them to ensure they did not touch, and allowed the plastic
switch to hang suspended from the copper MICC cable.
Ber nodded to his guard who signalled a thumbs up', and whilst he was leading Ber
away to safety another man ran towards the door.
*** We had been watching nervously as the electrician did his job, but the man
deserved a medal in my opinion.
Under extreme pressure he took less than four minutes.
Ashe was led away Geordie from Vastrick, armed with bolt cutters, appeared from
behind a green telephone junction box and ran towards the door.
In ter seconds he had removed the padlock and was heading back to his hiding place.
The telephone landline had been cut off over an hour ago, and the mobile phone
jammer had been in action since before the Europot raids.
We had noticed during the short journey from the police station to our current
position that the people in the var, and the few we saw or the streets, had all
lost their phone signals.
I found it amusing that almost everyone with a mobile phone did the same thing.
They saw the message, ignored it, pressed a few buttons and held it to their ear.
Seconds later, realising that they were not connected, they looked at the message
again and frowned.
Finally, the majority of them shook the phone and looked again to see whether the
signal had been restored, because of course everyone knows that sometimes the.