© Ian JonesTwo men suspected of plotting an Olympic terror attack are being held at Paddington Green police station in west London
Sources said the arrests were based on a tip-off after men were seen behaving suspiciously close to the venue in Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire on Monday.
Hertfordshire police officers began combing the banks after three men were seen in a dinghy on the River Lea.
The two men, aged 18 and 32, were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London, by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command, at 7am on Thursday morning.
They were detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and held at a central London police station.
A friend of the arrested men named the 18-year-old as Jamal ud-Din and said the older man was someone he knew only as "Zakariya."
Mizanur Rahman, 29, said the arrests "might have had something to do with the fact that they recently went canoeing" on the River Lea, a branch of which runs through the Olympic site in east London.
"It's just people trying to get into the Olympic spirit," he said, but he believed the authorities would try "painting it as jihad training."
The bread and circus begins. :sigh rolleyes: