[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[World news > Global terrorism]
Three terrorists convicted of plotting to blow up jets over Atlantic
> Liquid explosives were to be concealed in soft drink bottles
> US feared 9/11 scale al-Qaida attack was already under way
Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 September 2009 21.58 BST
Article history
British terrorists planned to blow up at least seven transatlantic flights from London, murdering more than 1,500 people in a plot on a scale to rival the September 11 attacks, a jury found today.
As three men now face life sentences after being found guilty of conspiring to explode liquid bombs on airliners flying from Britain to North America, the former head of US homeland security at the time of their arrests has revealed that the threat was taken so seriously that President George Bush was repeatedly briefed on the status of a UK surveillance operation on the London council flat being used as a terrorist bomb factory.
The plan involved inserting liquid explosives into empty bottles of Lucozade and Oasis, colouring the liquid so it appeared to be the same as the original.
The cell, based in east London and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, was supposed to carry out what counter-terrorism officials say was an al-Qaida-inspired suicide mission, motivated by rage at British and US foreign policy.
ThThe US former homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, told the Guardian the US administration was on such a state of heightened alert about the plot that it turned back a plane in midair two days before the arrests, believing a terror suspect was on board.
The men were arrested in August 2006, just two days before it was feared they would stage a dry run of the plot – but the US had wanted the plotters arrested days earlier, fearing that British police would miss the start of the attack.
Chertoff said of the plot: "This stood out as being of a very substantial dimension, advanced, specific and sophisticated and of a scale comparable to 9/11."
Yesterday at Woolwich crown court, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating the bombs on airliners. The liquid bombs, disguised in drinks bottles, were so ingenious, relying on batteries and detonators carried separately, that they would have bypassed airport security. UK scientists, who constructed versions of the devices, concluded that if exploded, they would have punched a hole in the aircraft skin.
The plot was disrupted on 10 August 2006, leading to chaos at airports and restrictions which remain in force today on the amount of liquids travellers can carry aboard.
The men were previously put on trial last year, but while the first jury convicted the three chief defendants of conspiracy to murder, they stopped short of concluding that they had targeted planes. After a lengthy retrial, a new jury convicted them after 54 hours of deliberations.
None of five other defendants was convicted of the airline charge, but one, Umar Islam, was convicted of conspiracy to murder. Of the other four, one was cleared on all counts, and the jury was unable to agree verdicts on the other three men. Next week the CPS will decide whether to seek retrials of the men for whom the jury failed to reach a verdict, and the judge will sentence those found guilty.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, head of Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command, said the convicted men intended to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale. They intended to cause carnage through a series of co-ordinated explosions and bring terror into the lives of people around the globe. Apart from massive loss of life, these attacks would have had enormous worldwide economic and political consequences."
One man, Donald Stewart-Whyte, was acquitted on all charges, three years after he was first arrested. In a statement read outside court, his solicitor demanded a public apology from the Crown Prosecution Service for putting him on trial on the basis of "spurious" evidence.
The lawyer, Bernie Duke, said: "We also invite the CPS to issue a public apology to Mr Stewart-Whyte and his family for the terrible wrong done to them. Mr Stewart-Whyte will continue to speak out against terrorism and fight against the slur that there is any connection between true Islam and terrorism."
The investigation and trials are estimated to have cost £35m. It was the biggest counter-terrorism operation in UK history, involving hundreds of police officers and MI5 agents.
During the surveillance, a bug caught one man recording a suicide video. Other videos were recovered after the arrest and in one, Ali warned of "body parts … decorating the streets" if Muslims were not left alone, and said he had yearned to take part in violent jihad since he was a teenager.
Before the arrests Washington pressed Britain to arrest the men earlier than police had planned, but Scotland Yard wanted to let the cell – which was under the tightest surveillance – continue so more evidence could be gathered to put before a jury.
The arrest in Pakistan, at the urging of the US, of the plot's alleged mastermind, Birmingham-born Rashid Rauf, led UK police to bring their own arrests forward. Scotland Yard and MI5 feared if the UK cell learned of Rauf's arrest they would either try to escape or rush forward their attack, fearing imminent capture.
Chertoff told the Guardian: "Rauf was the link between the plotters and the al-Qaida end. We know there was a connection to al-Qaida central."
[The Slatest] from [Slate Magazine]
British Jury Convicts Three of Planning To Blow Up Planes
Three years after the plot was uncovered, a jury found that the terrorists planned to bomb at least seven trans-Atlantic flights on a single day using liquid explosives. In a different trial last year, three men were found guilty of murder but not of targeting airplanes. Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security, said that the plot was being followed closely by officials on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the United States wanted British police to arrest the plotters earlier out of fear that the attack would be launched earlier than expected. It involved the biggest counterterrorism operation in British history. The man who headed counterterrorism operations for Scotland Yard at the time writes in the Times that nervous American officials almost foiled the investigation because they were worried it was "going to slip through our hands." It seems a decision, which some believe can be traced back to former Vice President Dick Cheney, by U.S. officials to arrest the plotters' main contact in Pakistan forced British police to arrest the suspects before they could collect all the evidence.
Read original story in The Guardian | Tuesday, 8 Sep 2009
[World news > Global terrorism]
Three terrorists convicted of plotting to blow up jets over Atlantic
> Liquid explosives were to be concealed in soft drink bottles
> US feared 9/11 scale al-Qaida attack was already under way
Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 September 2009 21.58 BST
Article history
British terrorists planned to blow up at least seven transatlantic flights from London, murdering more than 1,500 people in a plot on a scale to rival the September 11 attacks, a jury found today.
As three men now face life sentences after being found guilty of conspiring to explode liquid bombs on airliners flying from Britain to North America, the former head of US homeland security at the time of their arrests has revealed that the threat was taken so seriously that President George Bush was repeatedly briefed on the status of a UK surveillance operation on the London council flat being used as a terrorist bomb factory.
The plan involved inserting liquid explosives into empty bottles of Lucozade and Oasis, colouring the liquid so it appeared to be the same as the original.
The cell, based in east London and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, was supposed to carry out what counter-terrorism officials say was an al-Qaida-inspired suicide mission, motivated by rage at British and US foreign policy.
ThThe US former homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, told the Guardian the US administration was on such a state of heightened alert about the plot that it turned back a plane in midair two days before the arrests, believing a terror suspect was on board.
The men were arrested in August 2006, just two days before it was feared they would stage a dry run of the plot – but the US had wanted the plotters arrested days earlier, fearing that British police would miss the start of the attack.
Chertoff said of the plot: "This stood out as being of a very substantial dimension, advanced, specific and sophisticated and of a scale comparable to 9/11."
Yesterday at Woolwich crown court, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating the bombs on airliners. The liquid bombs, disguised in drinks bottles, were so ingenious, relying on batteries and detonators carried separately, that they would have bypassed airport security. UK scientists, who constructed versions of the devices, concluded that if exploded, they would have punched a hole in the aircraft skin.
The plot was disrupted on 10 August 2006, leading to chaos at airports and restrictions which remain in force today on the amount of liquids travellers can carry aboard.
The men were previously put on trial last year, but while the first jury convicted the three chief defendants of conspiracy to murder, they stopped short of concluding that they had targeted planes. After a lengthy retrial, a new jury convicted them after 54 hours of deliberations.
None of five other defendants was convicted of the airline charge, but one, Umar Islam, was convicted of conspiracy to murder. Of the other four, one was cleared on all counts, and the jury was unable to agree verdicts on the other three men. Next week the CPS will decide whether to seek retrials of the men for whom the jury failed to reach a verdict, and the judge will sentence those found guilty.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, head of Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command, said the convicted men intended to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale. They intended to cause carnage through a series of co-ordinated explosions and bring terror into the lives of people around the globe. Apart from massive loss of life, these attacks would have had enormous worldwide economic and political consequences."
One man, Donald Stewart-Whyte, was acquitted on all charges, three years after he was first arrested. In a statement read outside court, his solicitor demanded a public apology from the Crown Prosecution Service for putting him on trial on the basis of "spurious" evidence.
The lawyer, Bernie Duke, said: "We also invite the CPS to issue a public apology to Mr Stewart-Whyte and his family for the terrible wrong done to them. Mr Stewart-Whyte will continue to speak out against terrorism and fight against the slur that there is any connection between true Islam and terrorism."
The investigation and trials are estimated to have cost £35m. It was the biggest counter-terrorism operation in UK history, involving hundreds of police officers and MI5 agents.
During the surveillance, a bug caught one man recording a suicide video. Other videos were recovered after the arrest and in one, Ali warned of "body parts … decorating the streets" if Muslims were not left alone, and said he had yearned to take part in violent jihad since he was a teenager.
Before the arrests Washington pressed Britain to arrest the men earlier than police had planned, but Scotland Yard wanted to let the cell – which was under the tightest surveillance – continue so more evidence could be gathered to put before a jury.
The arrest in Pakistan, at the urging of the US, of the plot's alleged mastermind, Birmingham-born Rashid Rauf, led UK police to bring their own arrests forward. Scotland Yard and MI5 feared if the UK cell learned of Rauf's arrest they would either try to escape or rush forward their attack, fearing imminent capture.
Chertoff told the Guardian: "Rauf was the link between the plotters and the al-Qaida end. We know there was a connection to al-Qaida central."
[The Slatest] from [Slate Magazine]
British Jury Convicts Three of Planning To Blow Up Planes
Three years after the plot was uncovered, a jury found that the terrorists planned to bomb at least seven trans-Atlantic flights on a single day using liquid explosives. In a different trial last year, three men were found guilty of murder but not of targeting airplanes. Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security, said that the plot was being followed closely by officials on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the United States wanted British police to arrest the plotters earlier out of fear that the attack would be launched earlier than expected. It involved the biggest counterterrorism operation in British history. The man who headed counterterrorism operations for Scotland Yard at the time writes in the Times that nervous American officials almost foiled the investigation because they were worried it was "going to slip through our hands." It seems a decision, which some believe can be traced back to former Vice President Dick Cheney, by U.S. officials to arrest the plotters' main contact in Pakistan forced British police to arrest the suspects before they could collect all the evidence.
Read original story in The Guardian | Tuesday, 8 Sep 2009
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