Inside the terror plot that 'rivaled 9/11'

In one of the most significant terrorism cases since 9/11, a British court Monday sentenced three British citizens to life in prison for conspiring to blow up transatlantic airliners in a plot that was thwarted in August 2006. The terrorist plot, which disrupted international air travel at the time, led authorities in 2006 to impose restrictions on liquids and gels on airplanes. Those restrictions remain in place today.

The three men, who were convicted by a British jury one week ago, were considered ringleaders of the conspiracy, according to prosecutors. They were among twelve charged in the case. To date, nine have stood trial.

In addition to the three convicted, the jury last Monday found four other defendants not guilty of the airliner conspiracy. One defendant was acquitted. The verdicts came at the end of a six-month retrial ordered by British authorities after a jury delivered mixed verdicts in an initial trial held in 2008.

In spite of the four acquittals in the retrial, British authorities expressed relief and satisfaction that the those they described as ringleaders were found guilty. “I cannot thank enough those involved for their professionalism and dedication in thwarting this attack and saving thousands of lives,” said U.K. Home Secretary Alan Johnson in statement. Johnson described it as the largest counterterrorism operation ever in the U.K.; the U.K. Press Association estimated the cost of the investigation and two trials at around $200 million.

The case highlighted the continuing threat posed by British-born radicals and the potential for Britain to serve as a staging ground for attacks against the United States.

Authorities said the men, arrested in August 2006, planned to smuggle liquid explosives disguised as sports drinks aboard a half-dozen or more flights headed from London’s Heathrow Airport to cities in the United States and Canada. Counterterrorism investigators say that such an attack could have killed well over 1,500 on board the planes, and many more if detonated over densely populated urban areas.

In an interview last year, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told Dateline NBC that, if successful, the alleged plot "would have rivaled 9/11 in terms of the number of deaths and in terms of the impact on the international economy."

A review of the nearly 5,000 pages of trial transcripts and interviews with key British, American and Pakistani officials involved in the investigation offer insights into the current state of al-Qaida and the evolution of its operations, adding to the body of evidence that recruits from the West are being trained and directed by al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan.

The name al-Qaida was not spoken frequently in court, but it loomed over the proceedings.

Prosecutors did not produce any evidence explicitly linking the plot to al-Qaida, but privately, British officials have suggested that al Qaida’s number three at the time, Abu Ubaidah al Masri, authorized the alleged airline plot. Al Masri reportedly died in 2007 of natural causes.

U.S. officials: Plotters trained by al-Qaida in Pakistan
A senior Bush administration official and two U.S. intelligence officials told Dateline that intelligence shows that some of the men convicted in this case – though the officials did not identify them by name – traveled to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, widely believed to be home to al-Qaida’s leaders, where they received explosives training “from al-Qaida specialists.”

Video   See a government liquid bomb test explosion The Department of Homeland Security commissioned this liquid bomb test in the New Mexico desert after authorities broke up the alleged London airline plot in 2006. Dateline NBC

Testifying before a Senate committee in 2007, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, described the plotters as “an al-Qaida cell, directed by al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan.”

While some have questioned whether an attack really was imminent or even viable, law enforcement and intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic insist that it was only weeks away.  “This was no dress rehearsal,” says Andy Hayman, at the time Scotland Yard’s Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations, whose command included counterterrorism.  If the plotters had not been stopped, Hayman, now an NBC News analyst, added, “I believe they would have been successful.”

The three convicted of conspiracy to murder by blowing up aircraft en route to North America were Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Assad Sarwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28. The verdict was not unanimous, but the judge accepted a majority verdict, according to which 11 of the 12 jurors were in agreement. At their first trial last year, all three were convicted of a general charge of conspiracy to murder, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the specific charge that their intended targets were airplanes in mid-flight. The three men Monday received sentences that were among the longest handed out by a British court in a terrorism case. Ali received a minimum 40 year prison term, Sarwar a minimum 36 year term and Hussain a minimum 32 years.

This time, the jury was persuaded by the evidence, said Sue Hemming, Head of the Crown Prosecution Service Counter Terrorism Division. “This was a calculated and sophisticated plot to create a terrorist event of global proportions and the jury concluded that Ali, Sarwar and Hussain knew what the target was.”

Those found not guilty last Monday of conspiring to bring down airliners were: Ibrahim Savant, 28, Arafat Waheed Khan, 28, and Waheed Zaman, 25. The jury was deadlocked on a general murder conspiracy charge against the three, and they could face a third trial. Another defendant in the latest trial, Abdul Waheed (a.k.a Don Stewart-Whyte), 23, who was not a defendant in the first trial, was cleared of all murder conspiracy charges. An eighth defendant, Umar Islam, 31, was found guilty of the general murder conspiracy; the jury was hung on the second conspiracy charge involving the specific airline plot. Islam this Monday was sentenced to a minimum 22 years in prison.

In the first trial last year, one individual, Mohammed Gulzar, 29, accused by authorities of flying into the U.K. from South Africa in mid-July 2006 to "superintend" the final stages of the plot, was also acquitted of all charges.

Prosecutors characterized Ali and Sarwar as lead figures in the conspiracy and the others as footsoldiers in the plot.

Authorities described Ali, who lived in the east London community of Walthamstow and had a college degree in computer engineering, as the cell leader in Britain and the one responsible for developing the mechanics of the bomb design. Sarwar was essentially the bomb chemist; he purchased and stored the chemicals to make the liquid explosive and detonator.

Ali, Sarwar, and Gulzar all had significant links to Pakistan. Between 2002 and 2006, both Ali and Sarwar made repeated trips there. In early 2003, according to court testimony, both traveled to a refugee camp in Chaman, Pakistan near the Afghan border, on behalf of a London-based Islamic medical charity. Ali testified that the suffering he saw in the refugee camps made him increasingly angry with U.S. and British foreign policy, anger he claimed intensified after the outbreak of the Iraq war that spring.

According to U.S., U.K., and Pakistani law enforcement sources, Ali and Sarwar’s key contact in Pakistan was Rashid Rauf, a U.K. national who allegedly fled to Pakistan in 2002 after he became a suspect in the murder of his own uncle in Birmingham, England. Rauf is believed by counterterrorism investigators to have played a critical role in the alleged airline plot, coordinating between the plotters in the U.K. and the al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan.

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