It had seemed a straightforward operation. Immigration officials and police, unarmed as usual in Britain, broke into an apartment in a run-down north Manchester suburb last Tuesday, seeking a 23-year-old Algerian who had gone missing after his bid for asylum was rejected. He was to be detained, pending deportation, under anti-terrorism legislation. Instead of one man inside the apartment, however, the police found three, all of them North African.
The detectives immediately checked the identities of the other two men with Scotland Yard, which was investigating the discovery of traces of the deadly poison ricin in a north...
