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Middle-class and British: the Muslims in plots to bomb jets

By Caroline Davies, John Steele and Catriona Davies

(Filed: 11/08/2006)

Page 1 of 3

Twenty-four terrorist suspects being held last night over an alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 transatlantic jets include middle-class, well-educated young men born in Britain. At least one of them converted to Islam only recently.

As Britain remained on a "critical" level of alert, it emerged that among those arrested were the white son of a former Conservative Party worker, the son of an architect and an accountant and a heavily pregnant woman. Some had studied at university and came from families that owned several properties or ran their own businesses.

Anti-terrorist police were continuing to search properties in High Wycombe, Bucks, Walthamstow, in east London, and Birmingham. Sources said they had found "a number of things that are causing interest". Many of those being questioned are believed to be Britons of Pakistani origin, although police have not confirmed that.

There were fears that as many as five people could still be on the run but Scotland Yard sources said it was believed that those alleged to be the key people had been arrested. Several arrests co-ordinated with those in Britain were made in Pakistan.

"Pakistan played a very important role in uncovering and breaking this international terrorist network," Tasnim Aslam, a foreign ministry spokesman, said in Islamabad.

The British arrests were made after security sources decided that plans to explode liquid bombs on airliners flying from the United Kingdom to America could have been executed within 48 hours.

Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner, said: "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

It is believed that the plan was for different passengers to carry peroxide-based liquid explosive in drinks containers and detonators disguised as everyday electronic devices and combine them on board.

Continued

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.



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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world ... &th&emc=th



The Overview

Terror Plot Foiled; Airports Quickly Clamp Down

LONDON, Aug. 10 — The British authorities said Thursday that they had thwarted an advanced terrorist plot to blow up airplanes flying from Britain to the United States using liquid explosives that would have escaped airport security.

The officials said they had arrested 24 men, all British-born Muslims, who planned to carry the liquids in drink bottles and combine them into explosive cocktails to commit mass murder aboard as many as 10 flights high over the Atlantic.

Intelligence officials said they believed that some plotters were probably still at large, requiring increased airport security.

Airports, which faced chaotic delays and cancellations, instantly changed rules on what passengers could carry on board. In the United States, liquids, gels and creams were banned from carry-on luggage. In Britain, all carry-on items were barred except objects like wallets and eyeglasses without their cases.

Officials said the plot — of which few concrete details were made known — bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda and involved links to plotters in Pakistan.

Late Thursday, the authorities in Pakistan said an unspecified number of arrests had been made there, too.

An American counterterrorism official, who spoke in return for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said several of the plotters had traveled to Pakistan in the last few weeks and might have met there with at least one person affiliated with Al Qaeda. The official said it was after that person’s arrest by Pakistani authorities that the British, fearing that word of the detainment would send the plotters into hiding, decided to move in.

This is the latest in a series of conspiracies apparently rooted in the disaffection of young, British-born Muslims, many of Pakistani descent, who cast themselves as part of a jihadist struggle against Britain, which they see as an outrider of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon.

It also mimicked a failed plot in the Philippines in 1995 financed by Osama bin Laden to blow up airplanes over the Pacific. That ended when the chemicals exploded at an apartment in Manila.

On Thursday, Britain raised its terror threat assessment by one notch to its highest level, "critical," meaning an attack was imminent.

The American official said the plotters were planning a "dry run" of the operation in the next few days when they planned to test whether they could board flights simultaneously. If this had worked, a full-scale attack would have been carried out within days, the official said.

British police officials, who spoke in return for anonymity because of their customary procedures, said the attacks had not been planned for Thursday.

One American official said the attack was not imminent. "I would caution about how close it was," he said. "They had materials, but it wasn’t like they were driving out to the airport the next day. They identified a number of flights."

Peter Clarke, London’s top counterterrorism police officer, said, "The intelligence suggested that the devices were to be constructed in the United Kingdom and taken through British airports." But he also said that some unspecified event or development late Wednesday convinced British counterterrorism operatives that they must move quickly to thwart a conspiracy with what he called "global dimensions."

In recent days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent hundreds of agents around the United States to chase down possible leads from British intelligence sources.

"There is no indication as of now that anyone in the U.S. was tied to this," a senior Justice Department official said.

About 8:30 Wednesday night, federal officials called security officers at the major airlines and told generally of what was happening as well as the security measures that would begin on Thursday. Among the airlines believed to be targets were United, American and Continental, according to officials from the Department of Homeland Security, although it was unclear whether the plotters had bought tickets.

Mr. Chertoff said the attackers planned to carry explosive material and detonation components "disguised as beverages, electronic devices and other common objects" onto the planes.

A bulletin issued Thursday by the F.B.I. about the plot gave details of some of the properties of liquid-peroxide-based explosives. It noted that they are sensitive to "heat, shock and friction" and can be detonated with heat or an electric charge.

In some ways, news of a plot that could have killed thousands of people reinforced the sense among Americans after Sept. 11, 2001, and the British after July 7, 2005, that their world had changed irrevocably in a way few would have wished. "This is the new way of life," said Arleen Malec, 60, a homemaker from Chicago who arrived in London from the United States.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company



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Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 53,00.html

By all means, let's impeach Bush for his wire-tapping and we must stop invading the privacy of these terrorists. It's just not right!

Adam Zapple wrote: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 53,00.html

By all means, let's impeach Bush for his wire-tapping and we must stop invading the privacy of these terrorists. It's just not right!


IF WE ONLY KNEW!!!

I don't care who wires were tapped so be it. If it keep idiots from blowing up 10 planes on route to the US, tap everyones phones. :-5 :-5 It is a dangerous time, and world be live in right now. I praise the Brits and Scotland Yard and whom ever came forward brave, and thousands owe their lives to you..

Clancy wrote: Well said. I praise ALL the agencies, U.S., European, Canadian, who work non stop to combat these atrocities from happening.



Hear, hear! Oops... this belongs down here.

*edit* I too don't give a sh*t who's phone they tap, if it needs to be done, I say do it.

.


Hear hear!

Ditto

University students at centre of terror plots

By Roya Nikkhah, Andrew Alderson and Julie Henry

(Filed: 13/08/2006)







The recruitment of Muslim students at British universities to take part in terrorist attacks is at the heart of the alleged plot to blow up passenger jets, it is feared.

A dossier of extremist Islamic literature has been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph on the campus of a north London university, one of whose students has suspected links to the alleged terrorist attack.



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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... w_13082006

Diuretic wrote: How far should governments be able to go? I mean what should be the limits on their various powers to fight terrorism? I don't mean phone-tapping I mean the whole thing. Where should the limits be?

Given that phone tapping is the topic here of late I'll put a concrete question. Do you believe that the government should be allowed to tap any phone it wishes and so do so without a warrant or any other independent judicial authorisation?


No I do not.

It is one thing to do so when they have good intelegence that a terrorist operation is in progress but then, they'd get a court order for that anyway but anyplace, anytime? Gives them too much power and is too easy to abuse.

This is a distinct argument from should they be allowed to run voice recognition and automatic keyword analysis on a large scale. Should this be allowed (and the equivalend e-mail scanning) if only the hits are recordsed and seen be human eyes?

Diuretic wrote: But wouldn't it enhance security if they could tap any phone at will? To be able to to do it with a warrant or with judicial authority of some sort they need to have suspicion about someone. What if they miss someone? Isn't it the case then that total surveillance means increased security?

Obviously a government isn't going to be able to tap every phone all the time. As you indicate they may be able to run automated programmes that look for key words or concepts. Should those programmes not run all the time, without the need for judicial approval?


If they have no suspicion then they should not be listening - think of the possible abuses of unrestricted wire-tapping. If they have grounds then they can always get permission. Total surveillance does not mean increased security - in the first case they cannot tap enough 'phones to make a real difference and in the second case the likely uses would be political rather than security.

As I said, the use of automatic systems with the appropriate safeguards is a different subject.