When the British police raided the homes of the terrorists, the evidence was plentiful: Travel documents hidden in a baby walker, videotapes of Osama bin Laden speeches and in the wardrobe, a stack of pamphlets titled Jihad and Preparation.
It was the morning of Sept. 25, 2001, and the anti-terrorism squads had just raided two homes in a working-class district of Leicester, U.K., a neighbourhood of terraced, red-brick homes, dominated by immigrants. The arrests were supposed to be the final kick at a crumbling terrorist cell and bring down one of its ringleaders.
But, like so many people before them, it took the police some time before they recognized the genius of this operation.
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