A man is due in court on terror charges over a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister.
Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, allegedly planned to launch a bomb attack on the security gates outside Downing Street before detonating a suicide vest in Number 10 in a bid to kill Theresa May.
Rahman has been charged with preparing acts of terrorism and will appear in court alongside Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21, who is accused of trying to join Islamic State.
Details of the assassination plot were reportedly given to the Cabinet on Tuesday by head of MI5 Andrew Parker in a briefing in which he revealed that a total of nine Islamist terrorist plots have been thwarted in the UK over the past year.
The Metropolitan Police would only say that Rahman, 20, and Imran, 21, were due to appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged with planning terror attacks.
Rahman, from north London, is also charged with assisting Imran in terror planning, while Imran, from south-east Birmingham, is charged with preparing acts of terrorism.
The alleged plan is said to have involved launching a bomb attack on the security gates outside Downing Street (PA)
Mr Parker’s Cabinet briefing came on the same day that a review of a string of UK terror attacks earlier this year revealed that the Manchester Arena bomber was known to MI5 and his attack, in which 22 people died, could have been stopped “had the cards fallen differently”.
Both men were arrested by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command in raids in London and Birmingham on Tuesday November 28.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman declined to discuss the details of the foiled attacks.