London Muslims plan protest

Members of the area's large South Asian population feel they are being unjustly targeted by the police in the fight against terrorism.

They cite a massive raid on a house in Forest Gate last Friday in which two British Muslim brothers were arrested, one of whom was shot.

Both men remain in custody but neither has been charged and investigators at the property on Lansdown Road have seemingly failed to find any evidence of a possible terrorist plot.

"People in the community are angry about the raid, they are angry about the shooting, they are angry about the lack of evidence and they are angry that the two men have been detained for so long without charge," John Rees, national secretary of the anti-Iraq war political party Respect, told AFP.

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, and 20-year-old Abul Koyair were due to learn Wednesday whether the authorities planned to press charges, ask to hold them for longer or set them free.

Angry at the situation, scores of largely Muslim locals packed a community centre near the brothers' house on Tuesday evening to hear speeches criticising police and government tactics by Rees, Yvonne Ridley, a journalist and fellow Respect member, and Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.

Rees drew comparisons between Friday's operation and the bungled police shooting of an innocent Brazilian man in the aftermath of last year's July 7 attacks on the London transport network by four British Muslim extremist suicide bombers.

"There is, at the very least, the gravest possible grounds for concern and the most pressing need for people to voice their misgivings if two innocent people are shot by the police in the same city in less than 12 months," he told the meeting.

Hoping to rally up to 1,000 people against the latest shooting and anti-terror raid, pressure group Stop Political Terror is organising a demonstration on Sunday afternoon outside the Forest Gate police station.