Royal wedding protest bid blocked

Police have been scouring the wedding parade route

Scotland Yard says a group called Muslims Against Crusades has applied for permission to protest outside Westminster Abbey on royal wedding day.

The group was behind a poppy-burning protest on Armistice Day; the English Defence League wants to hold a counter demonstration.

Five thousand police officers will be on duty on the day.

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said negotiations were in process but the wedding would not be disrupted.

She said there would be 70-80 close protection teams for VIPs on the day, 29 April.

Police have already begun searching central London for explosives.

Officers are scouring every inch of the route to Westminster Abbey, while dogs have also been checking bins and lamp-posts for bombs.

At a briefing on security arrangements, Ms Owens said 60 people currently on bail from prison would be banned from Westminster on the day of the wedding.

As well as the Royal Family, 50 heads of state are attending the ceremony, which it is anticipated will be watched by up to two billion people on television.

Scotland Yard said it had no intelligence of a specific terrorist threat to the wedding so was not currently in a position to impose anti-terrorism stop-and-search powers, said the BBC’s Danny Shaw.

Police have powers to ban any major protests along the main route that Prince William and his bride-to-be, Kate Middleton, will take.

But they are unable to rule out “static” protests taking place at other nearby locations in central London.

Officers at Scotland Yard were contacted by the ultra-nationalist English Defence League, which said it wanted to protest if the Muslims Against Crusades’ proposed action went ahead.

In March this year a member of Muslims Against Crusades was fined £50 for burning poppies at an Armistice Day ceremony.

Emdadur Choudary, 26, burned two large plastic poppies during a two-minute silence in west London on 11 November.

The group’s website calls on Muslims to disrupt the wedding.

Ms Owens told the BBC police saw the wedding as a “day of celebration”.

“What we will be doing is making sure that no protest disrupts that celebration for the Royal Family.

Final preparations for the couple’s wedding on 29 April are in full swing

“What we have to do whenever we’re deciding about whether there can be a protest, if they’re asking to protest in the area around Parliament, it is defined by a very set definition of law – we have to authorise a demonstration but we can put conditions on that demonstration.

“It’s that negotiation process that we’re engaged in at the moment. But [people] should be absolutely reassured that it won’t disrupt the day and we’ll have a very safe and happy celebratory event.”

Last week, more details of the royal wedding were released by Clarence House, including the exact timings of the event and the route of the carriage procession.

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