Police drew up careful plans before their anti-terror arrests yesterday to avoid antagonising local Muslim communities.

After the violent aftermath of the botched arrests by Scotland Yard in Forest Gate, East London, last year, police had printed leaflets explaining their actions at the ready and also held a series of meetings with Muslim leaders minutes after raids in Halifax and Manchester yesterday. Two men were arrested in Halifax and three in Manchester.

Senior officers have intensified their strategy to ensure that their counter-terror operations in Muslim communities do not provoke mistrust and street violence. A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said after the pre-dawn raids in Halifax: “The lessons of Forest Gate have been learnt, and we take the community into our confidence very, very quickly.”

Detectives there had arranged three meetings with religious and council leaders for soon after the raids but did not give the real reason why they wanted to meet.

In Manchester, where three Asian men were arrested in connection with the escape from Britain last week of a terror suspect, scores of officers toured the Cheetham Hill and Longsight areas of the city with multilingual leaflets explaining their action. Detectives also met influential community leaders. The operation was staged after the terror suspect, who was subject to a control order, sought refuge in a mosque and was helped to escape.

Yesterday’s raids passed off peacefully. Police emphasised that neither group of men posed any immediate threat of a terror attack in Britain.

The operation in the Pellon area of Halifax was run by Scotland Yard but West Yorkshire officers insisted that they would have the final say on how to deal with the Muslim community. Leaflets were printed in five languages and police staged face-to-face meetings in a neighbourhood centre, a community hall and a mosque.

The two men, aged 25 and 29, were arrested in connection with a search for extremist material that may have been used to radicalise individuals or promote ideologies supporting terrorism. Both were taken to London for further questioning. Police are still searching four addresses in the Halifax area.

In Manchester police said that two men, both 24, from an address in Cheetham Hill, and a third, aged 32, from a house in Longsight, had been accused of “aiding and abetting an offender”. A source suggested that one of the men was suspected of radicalising the terror suspect, who lived in Manchester and is thought to have fled to Pakistan four days after receiving the control order for expressing a desire to take part in jihadi operations. The other two are suspected of helping him to flee.

In London senior officers are discussing whether Muslim leaders can be given access to the intelligence behind raids so that communities can be assured that operations are based on sound suspicions.

There is also discussion about whether some trusted leaders may be alerted to operations before they take place. This idea was raised last summer after Scotland Yard’s botched raid on two houses in Forest Gate as they searched for a chemical weapon. Nothing was found and one of the suspects was shot accidentally in the arm.

The bungled operation led to demonstrations, and Andy Hayman, the head of counter-terrorist operations at Scotland Yard, was forced to apologise to the Muslim community.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu