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April 4, 2008

UK: Trial Of Muslims For Air Terror Mass Murder Plot

Background

On the morning of Thursday, August 10, 2006, travellers at airports in Britain found their plans to fly had been thrown into disarray. The Home Secretary at that time, John Reid, made an announcement. He claimed that a major plot had been disrupted with the help of police and MI5. He said it was a "an alleged plot to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life. The police believe the alleged plot was a very significant one indeed." During the night and morning, 24 arrests had been made at locations in London, Thames Valley and Birmingham.

For air passengers at UK terminals, that day and the days that followed would be marked by delays, stringent baggage checks, and a ban on all hand luggage that could not fit into a small clear plastic bag. Incoming and outgoing flights were cancelled. At Stansted and other airports, passengers were told they could not bring drinks onto the planes. Mothers who had milk for their babies were asked to drink some of the milk, to prove it was safe. This was the first time British airport authorities had ordered restrictions on passengers carrying fluids.

In the US, inbound commercial flight risks were raised by Homeland Security to "red". The Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, said that terrorists were plotting to carry explosives onto aircraft which were disguised as drinks and electrical devices. Secretary Chertoff also said that the plot, which was in its final stages before execution, was similar to the Operation Bojinka plot, which had come to light in January 1995.

"Bojinka", from an onomatopoeic Croatian word expressing the sound "boom", was hatched by Ramzi Yousef. In a sink in a Manila apartment which Yousef had rented, a chemical fire had drawn the attention of the fire brigade and police. The police are now thought to have staged the fire as a device to mount an official raid. In a notebook were details of plans to smuggle explosives onto planes in small containers, which then would be assembled on board with detonators. These small bombs would involve nitroglycerin. The target planes would be US bound flights travelling over the Pacific. Ramzi Yousef assembled a small prototype on the first section of a two-stage flight as an experiment on December 11, 1994. Yousef left the plane with the bomb and timer under a seat. Four hours later, Japanese businessman Haruki Ikegami's body was ripped in two.

Current Trial

Though a total of 24 people were arrested in 2006, in what was called by British police "Operation Overt", some of those individuals were subsequently released. By September 7, 2006, 17 individuals had been charged with offences related to terrorism.

Among those arrested were eight individuals who had connections with the Masjid-E-Umer mosque in Queen's Road, Walthamstow, northeast London. This mosque, a former synagogue that "converted" in 1981, adheres to Deobandi Islam, a strict fundamentalist interpretation of the faith. The leaders of the Taliban had studied at Deobandi madrassas.

One of these eight individuals, 23-year old biochemistry student Waheed Zaman, lived at 104 Queens Road, across the street from the mosque. He was a member of the Tablighi Jamaat and also a student at London Metropolitan University, where he headed the university Islamic Society. At this student society HQ, two portable buildings, audio tapes and literature by extremist preachers were subsequently recovered by journalists.

This week on Thursday, April 3, eight men stood trial at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London. Six of these eight individuals come from north London, and at least three of them (Ibrahim Savant, Waheed Zaman and Arafat Waheed Khan) have been connected with the Masjid-E-Umer mosque. Two of the eight men on trial (Assad Ali Sarwar) come from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Umar Islam, who also is known as Brian Young lives in this town, and Assad Ali Sarwar is from Walton Drive in High Wycombe.

News is carried by the Times, the Telegraph, Telegraph (again), Telegraph (3), Independent, BBC, Press Association, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press, Waltham Forest Guardian, Sky News, Reuters, BBC (again), Bloomberg, Monsters & Critics, Mirror, Guardian, In the News, Fox News, Buckinghamshire Free Press, CNN, Daily Mail, Daily Mail (update) and Associated Press (update).

The suspects are (top row, left to right) Abdullah Ahmed Ali, (27), Assad Sarwar, (27), Tanvir Hussain, (27), Mohammed Gulzar, (26), (bottom row) Ibrahim Savant (27), Arafat Khan, (26), Waheed Zaman, (25) and Umar Islam aka Brian Young (29).

On the first day of the trial, prosecutor Peter Wright QC told the jury: "The prosecution case is that they intended to cause a series of explosions on board a selected number of transatlantic aircraft, by the detonation in flight of home-made bombs, commonly referred to as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs."

"The component parts of the devices would be designed to resemble soft drinks bottles and their liquid contents; batteries and other innocuous items of hand luggage. Once assembled, these items would have the capability of being detonated, we say, with devastating consequences."

Mr Wright identified three individuals - Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar as being the main organisers of the plan "with principle responsibility in achieving this goal".

The prosecutor said that the suspects may already have recruited up to 18 other people who would have acted as suicide bombers. He said that the other defendants on trial were "some of those prepared to lose their lives..."

He told the jury: "These men and others were actively involved in a deadly plan designed to bring about what would have been, had they been successful, a civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale. Fortunately they were arrested before they could put those plans into effect."

Mr Wright told the court that at least seven regular airline flights (which left from Heathrow Terminal 3) had been targeted to be attacked. These planes, which departed at closely-related times, were the 1415 United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco, 1500 Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto, 1515 Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal, 1540 United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago, 1620 United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington, 1635 American Airlines Flight 131 to New York and the 1650 American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago.

Each of these planes could have held between 241 and 285 people. Mr Wright indicated that there was evidence that these regular scheduled flights were not the only ones which had been planned as targets by the alleged conspirators.

The judge presiding over the case is Mr Justice Calvert-Smith. He warned the jury that the case would be "high-profile" with dozens of eyewitnesses taking the stand. The trial may last as long as eight months, and is expected to be the biggest terror trial to have so far taken place in Britain.

The eight men on trial are all charged under two articles of legislation. Firstly they are charged under Section 1 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 - that they "conspired with other persons to murder other persons". And additionally they are charged under Section 5 (1) of the Terrorism Act 2006. - "preparing to smuggle parts of improvised explosive devices on to aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board."

The Explosives

The main ingredient of the bombs was to be hydrogen peroxide mixed with other chemicals, Mr Wright told the jury on Thursday. The explosive would be in a liquid form, and would be injected into 500ml plastic bottles of soft drinks, such as Oasis and Lucozade. The explosive would be mixed with a sugary powdered drink mix called Tang.

The charge to cause the explosion would come from another substance called HMTD - chemically N(CH2-O-O-CH2)3N. This is a highly unstable explosive (Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) which has been around for almost 120 years. Despite its instability, it has been used traditionally as a detonator as it is less reactive than other chemical detonators such as mercury fulminate or acetone peroxide.

HMTD too comprises hydrogen peroxide as one of its ingredients and also citric acid. There are several recipes on the internet which show how HMTD can be made from easily obtainable materials. However, it is not a substance that is stable unless it is an extremely pure form. It cannot be practically stored in metal for any length of time as it forms salts and can corrode most metals. HMTD can detonate when exposed to UV rays or friction, heat or shock.

The HMTD detonator would be hidden inside one and a half volt AA batteries, and would be ignoited either using metal wire, or the flash bulb from a disposable camera. The igniting HMTD would then cause the hydrogen peroxide-based main explosive in the drinks bottles to erupt.

Farewell Videos

On Friday, Mr Wright told the court that many of the gang members had prepared "farewell" videos prior to their intended "martyrdom". Two videos had been found in the trunk of a car in Walthamstow after a police raid.

He said: "The recordings of these men were significant because they amounted to recordings in which each of these men contemplated losing their lives in some violent act perpetrated by them as a perceived act of martyrdom in the name of Islam."

One of these videos was shown to the court. It showed defendant Umar Islam aka Brian Young wearing an Islamic scarf (keffiyeh) seated before a black flag emblazoned with white Arabic lettering.

Umar Islam states: "We are doing this in order to gain the pleasure of our Lord, and Allah loves us to die and kill in his fires. And anyone who tries to deny this, then read the Koran and he will not be able to deny this. We will not leave this path until you leave our lands, until you feel what we are feeling. This is revenge for the actions of the USA in Muslim lands and their accomplices, such as the British and the Jews. This is a warning for the non-believers that if they do not leave our lands there are many more like us and many more like me until the law of Allah is established on this Earth. Now without doubt your dead are in hellfire, while the Muslims that die due to your acts will be in paradise. Martyrdom operations upon martyrdom operations will keep on raining on these kuffars until they release us and leave our lands."

"...I say to you disbelievers that as you bomb, you will be bombed. As you kill, you will be killed. And if you want to kill our women and children then the same thing will happen to you. This is not a joke. If you think you can go into our land and do what you are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and keep on supporting those that are fighting against the Muslims and think it will not come back on to your doorstep then you have another think coming. You are just sitting there, you are still funding the Army, you have not put down your leader, you have not pressured them enough. Most of them are too busy watching Home And Away and EastEnders, complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to care about anything. That is all you seem to care about and I know because I have come from that."

Abdullah Ahmed Ali said in his video: "Sheikh Osama has warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed, and now the time has come for you to be destroyed.... You show more care and concern for animals than you do for the Muslim Ummah. Those that know me, who really know me, will know that I was the happiest person they could ever have imagined and those that know me know that I was over the moon that Allah has given me the opportunity to lead this blessed operation."

After warning Westerners not to meddle in Muslim affairs in order to be left in peace he said: "Otherwise expect floods of martyr operations against you and we will take our revenge and anger, ripping amongst your people and scattering the people and your body parts and your people's body parts responsible for these wars and oppression decorating the streets."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 4, 2008 10:17 PM

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