UK police say terror plot thwarted

[Shammu]

ISLAMICS' AIM: DEMOLISH LONDON
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com
Aug 10, 2006

Former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bluntly informed Britain that London is next on the Islamic bomber hit list, per Stan Goodenough of Jerusalem Newswire.

At Sky News TV, Netanyahu set forth that Israel is combating Muslim murderers to save not only Israel but Britain from Islamic fire. Therefore, he reasoned that if Britain were smart, it would not find fault with Israel in the present conflict. Instead, it would bolster Israel against Hezbollah.

"’The big problem, the mother of all problems is Iran [and] the fact that if it arms itself with nuclear weapons it already has the missiles to reach London and soon it will have the missiles to reach the United States.

"’They’re developing those missiles, not because they want to target Israel, they already can, but because they want to target you,’" he explained.

He said that Shiites and Sunnis are killing one another as a prelude to bloodletting throughout the free world for Islam world rule. Israel is the start of the conquest of the rest of the world. Having done in Israel, Islamic killers international will "’turn greedily their eyes toward Europe.’"

He went on: "So unless the West wakes up and realizes that there is a new fascism here, a new Islamic-Hitlerism that threatens the West, it will not wake up in time."

Why then, Netanyahu asked, was Britain displaying condemnation of Israel defending itself? The former Israeli PM could not understand Britain, he said. Seventy-seven percent of Britons polled believe Israel is acting disproportionately in its fight against the Hezbollah.

"’What would you be saying today, what would you ask Tony Blair, the prime minister of Britain, to do today if London was being hit by hundreds and indeed thousands of rockets?

"’You would be screaming your head off, saying, "Get rid of the source of that fire!"’"

He went on to praise Prime Minister Winston Churchill in defending Britain by bombing German cities such as Dresden. "Dresden was wiped out completely," he pointed out.

"Jerusalem Newswire believes that the stubborn and pride-driven insistence of politically-correct, and in many cases anti-Semitic, British journalists and politicians to criticize and condemn Israel for trying to crush Hizb’allah will ultimately help pave the way for a devastating rocket strike on the UK."

ISLAMICS' AIM: DEMOLISH LONDON

[Shammu]

Muslims sceptical about UK's latest terror alert
London, Aug 11, IRNA

UK Muslims-Terror Alert
The latest alleged terrorist plot in the UK to simultaneously carry out up to 10 simultaneous mid-air explosions on flights to the US has caused both concern and scepticism among the country's Muslim communities.

Muslims, who are already critical of the government's strategy, refer to previous false scares and misinformation, exampled by the supposed ricin poison plot, the mistaken police killing of a Brazilian and the blundered raid in Forest Gate, east London.

Fahad Ansari, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said that cynicism was caused by many high-profile raids plastered over the press in recent years.

"We have seen it time and time again. It has been hit and miss on too many occasions. It is causing a lot of mass hysteria," Ansari was quoted saying by the Guardian newspaper Friday.

He suggested that the raids could even have been timed to distract attention from criticisms of the government's stance in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire to the Israeli bloodbath in Lebanon.

"There has been so much pressure on the government, it could be a way of diverting attention away from its policy on the Middle East," Ansari said.

Many Muslim figures have also been critical of the government's response to treat the threat of terrorism as merely a security issue rather than the underlying political causes seen mainly as unjust and unbalanced foreign policies.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain also spoke of the scepticism being expressed by the unprecedented security precautions taken at all of the UK's airports after the country was put on its maximum terror alert for the first time on Thursday.

"One youngster said to me this morning, 'look, Tony Blair goes on holiday and the next thing you know they close all the airports'," said Mogra, who is an imam from Leicester, central England.

He suggested the new ban on allowing liquids being taken by passengers on board planes was "making a mockery of the seriousness of the situation."
"The youngsters are trying to laugh it off. Another said that we all know the human body is 75 per cent liquid," the sheikh said.

"People are cynical about the timing and critical about the way this is being done," he said.

Doubts were also raised by Dan Plesch, a research associate at London's Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, who said the "government's response to the real threat of terrorism has only made things worse."
"We need to believe we are being told the truth and that our government is acting in good faith. Unfortunately there is now sufficient reason to be sceptical about who we should entrust our security to," Plesch said in an article for the Guardian Friday.

Former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, expressed concern that the government and the press was provoking a further backlash again the Muslim community.

"We applaud the action of the police in taking appropriate action to avert a tragedy but what is really required now is to be aware of the appropriate facts on which their action was taken. There is a danger of stigmatising a whole community," Sacranie warned.

"We should not allow certain sections of the media and politicians to use the opportunity to carry out a diatribe against us. We need to know the facts," he said.

But Khurshid Ahmed, a member of the Commission for Racial Equality in Birmingham where some of arrests took place, expressed relief that an attack had been foiled.

"The response here is one of shock that we still find young people actively involved in activities which we would condemn as a society and also a sense of relief that a possible attack has been thwarted," Ahmed said.

Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, a loyalist to the government, also appealed to local communities to help provide as much extra information as possible to help the police thwart the terrorists.

Muslims sceptical about UK's latest terror alert

[Shammu]

Al-Qaida link to airline bomb plot uncovered

By Jim Caldwell

BRITISH and Pakistani officials yesterday said they had uncovered evidence of an al-Qaida connection to the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights.

British officials identified 19 of the suspects accused of planning to blow up US-bound aircraft in what was apparently the biggest terrorist plot to be uncovered since 9/11.

British police have arrested 24 people suspected of involvement in the plot. Three were reportedly converts to Islam. One of the suspects apparently worked at Heathrow Airport.

The identities of 19 were disclosed by the Bank of England as it announced it had frozen their accounts.

Travellers saw shorter lines at airports as flight schedules slowly returned to normal, one day after the disclosure of the alleged conspiracy severely disrupted British air traffic.

However, Tony Douglas, chief executive of the airport operator BAA, said restrictions on hand luggage would remain in force for “some time”.

In Pakistan, officials said they had detained a “key person” in the case, adding they had arrested five Pakistanis and two Britons in the case, including British national Rashid Rauf. He was arrested about a week ago and described as a “key person” with ties to al-Qaida.

“We arrested him in the (Afghanistan-Pakistan) border area and on his disclosure, we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain,” Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said.

The Guardian newspaper, citing unidentified British government sources, said after the first two arrests were made in Pakistan, a message was sent to Britain telling the plotters: “Do your attacks now.”

Later, a Pakistani intelligence official said 10 Pakistanis had been arrested yesterday in the eastern district of Bhawalpur, 300 miles southwest of Islamabad, in connection with the alleged plot.

Police in Italy arrested 40 people in a security crackdown after the thwarting of the airline plot, the Interior Ministry said, but it did not link them directly to the London case.

British and US investigators said the plotters sought to detonate liquid explosives to bring down as many as 10 planes. The bombs were to be assembled aboard the aircraft, apparently with peroxide-based solution and everyday carry-on items such as a disposable camera or a music player, US law enforcement officials said.

A federal law enforcement official in Washington said at least one martyrdom tape was found during raids across England on Thursday.

According to a senior US official, British Airways was also among the airlines set to be targeted, Time magazine reported, as well as United, Continental and American.

Al-Qaida link to airline bomb plot uncovered

[Shammu]

Day of terror strikes was planned for August 16
15:03pm 11th August 2006

Terrorists were planning to unleash a series of deadly mid-air explosions on flights between London and America on August 16, it has been revealed today.

Members of the terror group, who were arrested in a series of raids by anti-terror police yesterday, were due to mount a dry run today to check if they could smuggle components for liquid explosives through Britain's airports.

United Airline tickets dated next Wednesday were found by police at the home of one of the raided addresses.

One US intelligence official told today's Evening Standard: "The bombers were a couple of days from a test, and a few days from doing it."

The airlines targeted were United, American and Continental, which fly to New York, Washington and California.

Today the Bank of England named and froze the assets of 19 of the 24 air terror suspects arrested. The bank was acting under the instruction of Chancellor Gordon Brown and on the advice of the police and security services.

It acted under powers granted by the United Nations to tackle the financing of terrorism in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks. Its action means it is a crime to make their money available without a licence from the Treasury.

The oldest of the named suspects is 35 and the youngest 17. Thirteen of them are from east London - nine from Walthamstow, one from Chingford, one from Leyton, one from the Limehouse and Poplar area and one from Clapton.

Four are from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and the other two are from Birmingham and Stoke Newington, north London.

The imam of Walthamstow mosque, where many of the suspects live, urged the Muslim community to remain calm and assist the police in their inquries. The unnamed imam added: "We'd like to remind people that the suspects are innocent until proven guilty."

Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani government official said today that two British nationals arrested in Pakistan provided information about the alleged UK air terror plot.

The UK remains on a "critical" level of alert against terrorism and air passengers at UK airports are expected to face widespread disruption again today following the introduction of new anti-terrorism measures yesterday including a ban on hand luggage.

The plot, which was described as an attempt to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" by blowing up passenger jet, may have been thwarted just days before it was due to be carried out.

Day of terror strikes was planned for August 16

[Shammu]

Martyrdom video discovered at residence of one of the suspects

London, Aug. 11 (PTI): A 'martyrdom video' apparently recorded by a would be suicide bomber was found at one of the raided addresses in the UK as police continued to question 24 terrorist suspects linked to the plot to blow up US-bound flights from London. The two dozen people taken into custody are being questioned at Paddington Green high security police station in West London, police said today.

The majority are understood to be young British Asian men of Pakistani descent, many holding dual nationality. But residents in areas where the arrests took place identified at least one man who they said was a white British convert to Islam.

The alleged ringleaders have been under surveillance since last year, security sources said. Mi5, the British intelligence service, has been alerted by suspicious activity during visits to Pakistan.

The plot, which at first was considered too far-fetched, had echoes of an al-Qaeda plan, codenamed Bojinka and discovered in the Philippines in the mid-1990s, to use explosives in bottles in attacks on aircraft, a report in 'The Times' newspaper said today.

A 'martyrdom video' possibly recorded by a would be suicide bomber was found at one of the raided addresses in the UK, it said.

Reports from Pakistani intelligence, suggesting direct involvement of senior Kashmiri militants linked to al-Qaeda, convinced British intelligence that the plot had to be taken seriously, the report said. Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch was brought in to the operation last December.

"We have been looking at meetings, movements, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people," said Peter Clarke, Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch.

"This has involved close cooperation, not only between agencies and police forces in the UK, but also internationally." A number of events are understood to have convinced the counter-terrorist agencies to act. A telephone call from the alleged plot was intercepted, internet communication increased noticeably and two men under surveillance disappeared off the intelligence radar. However, security sources indicated that the key event - thought to be the transfer of funds - had taken place overseas. "It was very close, and it was too risky to allow the surveillance operation to go on for any longer," one source said.

Assets of 19 of the suspects were frozen and according to reports, several of them had thousands of pounds in their accounts. Some of those detained had been under investigation before for extremist activity.

The newspaper report quoting US sources said substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders so that they could purchase airline tickets. One report said they were planning a "dry run".

This may have been the event that triggered the decision to arrest the suspects. Coordinated arrests were also made in Pakistan, including the detention of figures in the militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

A biochemist, a Heathrow airport security worker and the son of a former Tory party worker were among the 24 suspects being questioned.

The Tory party worker's son was one of four held in High Wycombe. Neighbours said that he had had a difficult adolescence but had recently married and settled down.

"About six months ago he said he was converting to Islam. He grew a beard and shaved his head," a neighbour told The Times.

Waheed Zaman, a biochemistry student, and Amin Asmin Tariq, a Heathrow security worker, were arrested near Walthamstow dog track after a car chase.

Meetings of the Government's Cobra emergency unit were told that the first wave of bombings was to have targeted five aircraft leaving British airports in the next few days.

The destinations were New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The plotters are said to have studied the timetables of three US airlines, American, Continental and United.

The newspaper report, quoting security sources, said that a second wave of attacks had been considered, with as many as 12 aircraft to be attacked.

Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously in mid-Atlantic but had also discussed trying to blow up the aircraft as they circled above the destination cities. The aim was to cause maximum death and destruction in the air and on American soil. Paul Stephenson, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, yesterday said: "We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder. This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

US sources said that the main fear of British authorities was that terrorists planned to hide micro-bombs in false bottoms built into opaque energy drink bottles, enabling them to still drink the contents.

The devices may have been liquid explosive but experts said that it was more likely to have been a more stable peroxide material similar to that used in the 7/7 attacks last year.

Martyrdom video discovered at residence of one of the suspects

[Shammu]

 Target Britain: Wave of attacks planned, say investigators
Terrorists in UK still possess huge arsenal of bombs and weapons. Country remains under 'very severe' threat, security sources warn
By Raymond Whitaker, Paul Lashmar, Sophie Goodchild and Severin Carrell
Published: 13 August 2006

Suspected terrorists were planning to unleash a wave of "apocalyptic" attacks on land and air, using an arsenal of bombs and weaponry, including firearms, investigators have discovered.

Police and intelligence sources have indicated that the alleged plot which was thwarted last week was targeted at the UK, as well as at airliners heading for the US, and could have caused devastating loss of life and destruction on the British mainland. One Whitehall source said "many dozens" of plots were under investigation, involving "hundreds" of suspects.

According to one report last night, al-Qa'ida's leader in Britain could have been held in the raids. But security sources estimate that as many as 1,200 people here are actively involved with terrorism, and that the country is still under "very severe" threat from other potential terrorist plots. This, they added, explained why there were no immediate plans to lower the current national threat assessment from "critical", its highest level.

Last night, 23 people were still being held under terror laws at Paddington Green police station, west London, and other police stations in what has been described as the biggest operation carried out by police to prevent a potential terror attack. Legal sources said that most would be detained for the full 28 days allowed under the terror laws, before being charged. Detectives were preparing for "a long haul", police sources said.

Sources have told The Independent on Sunday that intelligence officers are aware of several active "jihadi" cells around the country ­ including one in east London thought to be unconnected to the suspects arrested last week. Investigators said surveillance in progress since the July 2005 bombings in London had identified the locations of explosives and weapons in quantities sufficient to commit wide-scale atrocities.

The alleged plot uncovered last week was said to involve apparently innocuous home-made liquid explosives being carried on to aircraft, and then turned into bombs using electronic devices such as iPods or cameras. Last night it was reported that police had recovered scores of bottles containing peroxide, a chemical which can be used to make bombs, from a recycling bank in High Wycombe.

The IoS has also learnt that British security officers are to investigate the availability over the internet of so-called binary explosives that can be made easily from two harmless substances. Experts were alarmed to discover that a Canadian company is openly selling an explosive made simply by combining a liquid with a powder in a plastic bottle, and then attaching a detonator.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, told police chief constables yesterday that there was no room for "complacency or self-congratulation". He added: "As I have said all along, no one should be under any illusion that the threat ended with the recent arrests. It didn't."

* The Sunday Telegraph reported that it had uncovered a dossier of " extremist Islamic literature" at London Metropolitan University, one of whose students was arrested last week. Material included documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services.

Suspected terrorists were planning to unleash a wave of "apocalyptic" attacks on land and air, using an arsenal of bombs and weaponry, including firearms, investigators have discovered.

Police and intelligence sources have indicated that the alleged plot which was thwarted last week was targeted at the UK, as well as at airliners heading for the US, and could have caused devastating loss of life and destruction on the British mainland. One Whitehall source said "many dozens" of plots were under investigation, involving "hundreds" of suspects.

According to one report last night, al-Qa'ida's leader in Britain could have been held in the raids. But security sources estimate that as many as 1,200 people here are actively involved with terrorism, and that the country is still under "very severe" threat from other potential terrorist plots. This, they added, explained why there were no immediate plans to lower the current national threat assessment from "critical", its highest level.

Last night, 23 people were still being held under terror laws at Paddington Green police station, west London, and other police stations in what has been described as the biggest operation carried out by police to prevent a potential terror attack. Legal sources said that most would be detained for the full 28 days allowed under the terror laws, before being charged. Detectives were preparing for "a long haul", police sources said.

Sources have told The Independent on Sunday that intelligence officers are aware of several active "jihadi" cells around the country ­ including one in east London thought to be unconnected to the suspects arrested last week. Investigators said surveillance in progress since the July 2005 bombings in London had identified the locations of explosives and weapons in quantities sufficient to commit wide-scale atrocities.

The alleged plot uncovered last week was said to involve apparently innocuous home-made liquid explosives being carried on to aircraft, and then turned into bombs using electronic devices such as iPods or cameras. Last night it was reported that police had recovered scores of bottles containing peroxide, a chemical which can be used to make bombs, from a recycling bank in High Wycombe.

The IoS has also learnt that British security officers are to investigate the availability over the internet of so-called binary explosives that can be made easily from two harmless substances. Experts were alarmed to discover that a Canadian company is openly selling an explosive made simply by combining a liquid with a powder in a plastic bottle, and then attaching a detonator.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, told police chief constables yesterday that there was no room for "complacency or self-congratulation". He added: "As I have said all along, no one should be under any illusion that the threat ended with the recent arrests. It didn't."

Target Britain: Wave of attacks planned, say investigators