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June 15, 2007

UK: Al Qaeda Islamist's Gang Jailed For 136 Years

On November 7, 2006 the convert to Islam, Hindu-born Dhiren Barot, was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court to life imprisonment. Mr Justice Butterfield told Barot that he would be imprisoned for a minimum of 40 years. Barot later appealed, and was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail.

34-year old Barot had been born in India to a Hindu family, and had been brought to Britain while a baby. He was schooled in north London, and became a convert to Islam in his twenties. He had been living in Kingsbury, north-west London, when he was arrested in August, 2004.

The full extent of the plot had only come to light after his computer hard drive was examined after his arrest. Barot's intended targets included the International Monetary Fund (IMF) building and the World Bank in Washington DC, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup building in New York, and the Prudential buildings in Newark, New Jersey.

In Britain, he intended to use stretch limousines, packed with gas cylinders and explosives and parking them in underground car parks, where they would be detonated. This plot was called the "Gas Limos" project. He also placed details on his computer of a "Rough Presentation for radiation or Dirty Bomb Project". His plans had been to operate the "Gas Limos" and "Dirty Bomb" operations in synchronized attacks. The plan for the latter projects had only been schemes, and he had no access to the necessary materials for a radiological dispersion device.

Barot had been charged with 12 additional offences. These were one count of conspiracy to commit public nuisance, seven counts of making a record of information for terrorist purposes, and four counts of possessing a record of information for terrorist purposes. Justice Butterfield, the judge in the case, ordered these to remain on file following the guilty plea on conspiracy to murder on October 12.

Seven other individuals, who had been arrested in the same operation which netted Barot, were still awaiting trial when Barot was sentenced.

The crown prosecutor, Edmund Lawson QC, stated: "There were plans for the detonation of a radiation dispersal device, more commonly known as a dirty bomb, the use of a petrol tanker to cause an explosion, and an attack on London's rail or Underground network, including the Heathrow Express, of an explosion on a Tube train while in a tunnel under the River Thames."

The prosecutor said that Barot had admired the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, which had killed 191 people and injured 1,755. Lawson said that Barot called the Madrid train station attack as "the definitive accident" which deserves to be emulated more than any other".

Edmund Lawson had opened his case against Barot by saying: "Barot, who was a member or close associate of the al Qaida terrorist organisation, led a conspiracy in this country to cause lethal explosions both here and in the USA. A conspiracy frustrated by the actions of police in arresting him in August 2004. The plan was to carry out massive explosions here and in the USA. The principal object being to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people without warning."

The prosecutor said that it was only an "an outstanding counter-terrorism operation" which had prevented Barot from putting his ideas into action. Thisoperation had involved intelligence from Pakistan and the United States.

It emerged that Barot had traveled to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where he had attended a terror training camp. He had used false identities, and possessed at least one false passport, the court heard. He used various aliases, including Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani. Barot had also gone to the United States to carry out reconnaissance on his intended targets.

Lawson said: "Here he recruited his co-defendants to provide the support he needed to carry out the reconnaissance necessary in the US where he went himself to select the target buildings."

Reconnaissance videos of US locations, which had been taken in April 2001, were found on video cassettes in his possession, and on his computer.

The prosecutor said: "Then in this country he conducted the research for the proposal and then for the preparation for the attack. This picture is consistent with the terms of a letter written by Barot himself, which has been recovered from computer equipment where he speaks of a 'small unit' that is operating 'around the clock' and a passage in the Gas Limos Project where he refers to his group as a 'sleeper cell'."

"The care he took in terms of his meetings with his co-defendants, the use of coded messages and the anti-surveillance tactics he employed to ensure that observation of his activity would be as difficult as possible lends further support to his role as the organiser of major terrorist activity designed to strike at the heart of both America and this country and to cause the loss of innocent human life on a massive scale," the prosecutor said.

34-year old Barot is wanted by the United States, where a four-count indictment has been made against him. He had pleaded guilty.

Mr Justice Butterfield said: "This was no noble cause. Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale."

"Your intention was not simply to cause damage, panic or fear. Your intention was to murder, but it went further. It was designed to strike at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state. And if successful, would have affected thousands personally, millions indirectly and ultimately the whole nation of the US and the UK."

The Times at that time quoted Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism unit, who said: "By his own admission Barot wanted to commit mass murder on both sides of the Atlantic. He was the leader of the plot. If he had succeeded, hundreds if not thousands could have died...."

"...Barot was a determined and experienced terrorist. He went to terrorist training camps in 1995, long before 9/11, or the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq. He is not someone who has recently been attracted to the terrorist cause. He is a full-time terrorist. His training showed through. He used anti-surveillance, coded messages and secret meetings, but he could not evade capture. He was stopped before he could attack the British and American people."

Barot had planned to use Americium-241 to create a radiological dispersion device or "dirty bomb". Americium can be obtained from smoke detectors.

He traveled extensively from 1995 onwards. Between February 1998 and November 2001, he reported on five occasions that his passport had been lost or stolen, and had it replaced. He used various fake aliases thereafter, and had two passports issued to him under his assumed identities.

Barot had received terror training abroad. He went to Kotti in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in 1995, where he spent five months in a terror training camp, again earning how to use weapons and explosives. He said that while in Kotti, he was "witnessing a side of Islam which cannot be found in classrooms." Much of what he learned would be published later in a book on Kashmiri jihad - "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir", published in 1999 under his pseudonym 'Esa al-Hindi by Maktabah Al Ansar publishers, (316, Ladypool Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham B12 6JY).

Barot wrote in this book: "A great burden for the Muslim fighters living out in the open is the blood sucking swarms of mosquitoes that constantly torment them" and noted that "thousands upon thousands of guest mujahideen are being slaughtered at a phenomenal pace."

He condemned the Pakistani secret service, the ISI for duping young men to act as "pawns in the game that adequately serve as cannon fodder, performing the country's dirty work."

"Jihad has many great spheres and it would be a misconception to confine it simply to the mountain-tops of foreign countries, as we are so prone to do. Instead we are forced to ask the question, do we put the fear of Allah into the enemies of al Islam?"

It is assumed that while in Kashmir, Barot had met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had been the planner of the 9/11 attacks, and it was here that he became involved with Al Qaeda.

In 1998 he was in Thailand, where he married, though what became of his wife thereafter is unknown.

Barot was in the Philippines in October 1999, where he attended the Hudaybiyah camp, which was run by the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which went on to bomb Bali in 2002 and 2005, as well as other targets. Hambali, who then led Jemaah Islamiyah, has said that he gave Barot contact addresses in California and South Africa. Hambali is now in Guantanamo bay, after being transferred there from a secret US jail. While in Hudaybiyah, Barot received training in small arms use, mortars and explosives handling.

In the United States in 2001, five months before 9.11, Barot made a video of his proposed targets. The video had been been found, sandwiched within a copy of a Bruce Willis video - Die Hard: Back With a Vengeance, which details terror explosions in New York. On this video, there is a moment where he makes the sound of an explosion as he pans over one potential target. The video had been discovered in a garage in London. An edited verion can be found here, and an unedited copy here (Windows media player documents).

On his hard disk, Barot had compiled his proposed strategies, filed under innocuous titles, such as "Holiday Pictures". For the planned assault on the Prudential building in Newark, which he first wrote of on September 2, 2001, he revised his plans 21 times.

He had written of his planned attack on the Citigroup building in New York that an operative had already been into the building to survey it for security shortfalls. In an amendment from February 2003, he wrote of this building: "Like the World Trade Center was, it is supported not a steel frame but on steel load-bearing walls."

In Britain, Barot had attended prayer meetings which were hosted by Abdullah el-Faisal, the Jamaican-born convert and Saudi-funded preacher of terror. Faisal was jailed for seven years in March 2003, for inciting murder and racial hatred. This preacher had asserted that it was "acceptable" for Jews, Americans and Hindus to be murdered with chemical weapons.

Barot saw that el-Faisal had black bodyguards with relatives in Montana, USA. He traveled to the US to try to recruit these to his cause.

On his hard disk he wrote of the potential effects of a bomb exploding on a tube train traveling beneath the river Thames: "Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself. This would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning, etc that would occur/result."

Barot had been issued with a staggering seven passports, five of which he had obtained using his real name, and two of which he had gained by using fraudulent identities.

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Today, Barot's seven accomplices, the henchmen expected to carry out his plans, were all convicted and given long sentences.

Those convicted are (left to right in the picture above): Abdul Aziz Jalil, Qaisar Shaffi, Omar Abdur Rehman, and in the picture below: Nadeem Tarmohamed, Junade Feroze, Zia Ul Haq, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti.

News of the convictions comes from This is London, Reuters, China People's Daily Post and the BBC.

Abdul Aziz Jalil, 34, of Luton, Bedfordshire, was sentenced to 26 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to cause explosions. He had attended training camps in Pakistan, and had helped Barot with his researches into radioactive materials to feature in the "dirty bomb" plot. Jalil also rented a "safe house" for Barot, where plans were kept. His fingerprints were found on documents and chemical containers.

Qaisar Shaffi, 28, from London, was sentenced to 15 years jail. He had accompanied Barot on his reconnaissance trip to the United States in 2001. At his home, police found pages from the Terrorist Handbook, with references to chemicals and explosives. After his arrest, he had told his father in tears that he did not know when he would leave prison. He admitted in June conspiracy to cause explosions.

Omar Abdur Rehman, aged 23 from Bushey, Hertfordshire, was also jailed for 15 years. He had been chosen to disable fire or security systems by Barot. In April, he admitted conspiracy to cause explosions. Plans and diagrams of security systems were found at his home. He had conducted research while staying at the Ramada Hotel in Watford.

Nadeem Tarmohamed, aged 29, from Willesden in north west London, also admitted in April that he had conspired to cause explosions. He had traveled with Barot to the US for reconnaissance. Plans of the proposed attacks upon the IMF, New York Stock Exchange and Prudential Buildings were saved on a computer account in Tarmohamed's name.

Junade Feroze, aged 31, from Blackburn, Lancashire in the north of England, was sentenced to 22 years also in April admitted a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions. Feroze owned a garage in Blackburn, and could dispose of cars and gain access to tires and gas canisters for use in some of the planned attacks. He had kept guard while secret meetings on the proposed attacks took place.

Zia Ul Haq, aged 28, from Paddington, London, received an 18 years jail sentence today. He had admitted conspiracy to cause explosions in April. A buildings expert, he had acted as a consultant for the terror cell, advising on how to create structural collapse of targets. He also assisted in creating false identities.

Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, aged 27, from Harrow in north west London, had a first class degree in engineering. He also placed a job advertisement for a "tanker driver"; a tanker featured in some of the attacks. He received a 20 year jail term. He also allowed Barot to store plans in his garage. He had admitted in April conspiracy to cause explosions.

Barot had been head of the cell, with Feroze, Jalil and Tarmohamed acting as his lieutenants. Mr Justice Butterfield at Woolwich Crown Court today said that he had "suspicions" that some of the men who were sentenced today may have recruited others to the cell.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 15, 2007 4:51 PM

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