Thread by @benrileysmith

NEW: London Mayor Sadiq Khan has never been briefed on the Hezbollah bomb factory plot in the city.

He’s been in post for two years+ but kept in the dark by the Met / Home Office.

[He was also a very public backer of proscribing Hezbollah in full]
telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/1…

Sadiq Khan meets the Met’s counter-terrorism chief around every two months. He entered office in May 2016. The Mayor shapes the Met’s budget and four-year plan. Yet @Telegraph understands at no point was he told of the disrupted plot.

The plot was disrupted before Khan took office - which means a briefing was not essential.

But Khan has been weighing how to tackle Hezbollah in the city. He wrote to successive Home Secretaries (Rudd + Javid) about the issue. He wanted a full ban...

...yet was never briefed.

But he was not alone.

Boris Johnson’s deputy mayor, who was in charge of **policing and crime** at the time the plot was uncovered in autumn 2015, also wasn’t briefed...

Stephen Greenhalgh, ex-London deputy mayor, tells @Telegraph he is “frankly staggered” the Met didn’t tell him about the operation.

He also says neither he nor Boris were briefed. (Boris spokesman didn’t comment when asked.)

Here’s Greenhalgh’s full comment:

So the list of those not told Hezbollah stored 3 tonnes of bomb-making materials in London outskirts includes:

- Current London mayor who pushed for Hezbollah proscription

- Ex-London deputy mayor in charge of policing

- MPs who wanted Hezbollah proscription

- The public

Tory chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee @TomTugendhat criticises the failure to alert MPs when plot was uncovered.

“We need to know when terrorist groups are forming up in our country. We should have been told as near to 2015 as possible that Hezbollah were doing just that.”

(The Met declined to comment about who they briefed, when or why.)