The Scotsman : Arrest in Pakistan led MI5 to airline terror plot suspects

Arrest in Pakistan led MI5 to airline terror plot suspects

August 11, 2006

THE endgame was played out in the glare of publicity, with a series of dawn raids across the country and unprecedented disruption to Britain's airports.

But the intelligence operation which officials say defeated the most audacious plot yet conceived against civilians in Britain began more than a year ago and thousands of miles away, The Scotsman can reveal.

Well-placed sources last night revealed that it was intelligence passed on by the authorities in Islamabad that alerted Western intelligence agencies to the threat in Britain.

"Pakistan has been very helpful in this," said one British official last night.

The exact information the Pakistanis have provided is shrouded in secrecy, but the government of Pervez Musharraf last year made several important arrests of men said to be senior figures in the al-Qaeda leadership.

Given that the four British men who carried out last July's suicide bombings in London were radicalised in Pakistan, British officials have been acutely interested in potential links between UK-based al-Qaeda sympathisers and established militants in Pakistan.

Based on the information from Pakistan, MI5 began its watching operation last year. The BBC last night reported the operation began in July, but The Scotsman understands it started several months earlier.

In the initial stages, counter-terrorism officers watched from a distance. By sifting telephone records, e-mails and bank records, the MI5 officers built up what insiders call "concentric circles" of information, gradually connecting each suspect to others and building up a detailed picture of the conspiracy.

The operation, Whitehall officials said yesterday, was "very definitely MI5-led." The men arrested had long been on the security service's list of more than 1,000 "priority" targets: people thought likely to provide active support for terrorism.

Counter-terrorism insiders have long conceded that MI5, which has a total of around 2,500 staff, cannot hope to monitor physically all of its key suspects at the same time.

A rolling 24-hour surveillance operation on a single target can require as many as 30 highly-trained officers, both to watch and to assess the information gathered.

Nevertheless, the potential risk from the suspected plot was judged to be so great that police and intelligence chiefs diverted dozens of officers to following and observing the men at the centre of the alleged conspiracy.

Officers yesterday refused to discuss the number of police and MI5 staff involved in the operation, but Peter Clarke, the Scotland Yard counter-terrorism chief who works closely with MI5, said the arrests had followed "an unprecedented level of surveillance".

For weeks, the intelligence officials involved in the painstaking process of assessing and analysing the information gathered by the surveillance believed that the men being watched were planning some sort of terrorist outrage but were unable to discern the exact nature of the plot.

Early last week, the operation dramatically accelerated. The developing intelligence picture suggested that the men were planning attacks on airliners, exploding bombs on multiple passenger planes destined for the US.

The key breakthrough, security sources say, concerned the liquid explosive the plotters were planning to use.

"If we had not been fortunate enough to get intelligence about the specific modus operandi, these attacks would have taken place," said one source close to the investigation yesterday.

Once the assessment about the plot had been rechecked and verified and intelligence chiefs were satisfied it was a reasonable conclusion to draw, the Prime Minister was informed about the "specific threat" to British interests.

Mr Blair telephoned President George Bush to discuss the plot on Sunday, and again on Wednesday.

For counter-terrorism experts, the plot had ominous historical echoes that reach to one of the most notorious figures in modern terrorism, Ramzi Yousef.

He helped carry out the first terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre in 1993, and was later arrested for it in 1995. But before his capture, Yousef was able to flee to the Philippines where he assembled a plan to explode bombs on 11 passenger jets bound for the US from a range of Asian cities.

Known as the Bojinka plot, Yousef and his allies planned to evade airport security by using a liquid explosive that would not be detected by normal searches.

The substance, a form of nitroglycerine, was to be carried in bottles for contact lens fluid and stabilised with a substance similar to cotton.

The small quantity of explosive would not be enough to destroy a plane outright. Instead, the plan was to detonate it against the inner wall of the cabin, rupturing the fuselage and causing the plane to crash.

"We are aware of the history books," John Reid, the Home Secretary, said about the comparison with the Bojinka plot.

Michael Chertoff, the US Homeland Security Secretary, also raised Yousef's plot in a news briefing in Washington yesterday.

Significantly, evidence recovered when the Bojinka plot was foiled suggested that the 11 planes would not be attacked simultaneously but in a phased series of detonations over almost two days.

Yesterday, British security officials were not ruling out the possibility that the arrested plotters had also been planning similar, staged attacks.

"There could have been several phases of multiple attacks," said one official.

"When a plane explodes above the sea, it's just about impossible to develop a forensic picture of what the cause was. That means you don't know what you're trying to prevent and so, yes, it's a possibility that there could have been several phases to this."

Another reason intelligence analysts are studying the Bojinka plan is its undoubted significance to al-Qaeda affiliates.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, regarded as the mastermind of the 11 September attacks on the US and now in American custody, has told his interrogators he studied Yousef's plot when he first proposed his 9/11 hijacking plan to Osama bin Laden.

And Richard Reid, a British Muslim who plotted to explode a small bomb on a US-bound flight in 2001, planned to conceal the explosive in his shoes.

Yousef and his co-conspirators had planned to hide batteries in the hollow heels of their boots.

Both Reid's and Yousef's group had been able to make their own liquid-based explosives in domestic kitchens using products available in most supermarkets.

Just as Yousef's and Reid's plots came to nothing, British and American officials last night were hoping that they had once again foiled the third incarnation of al-Qaeda's plan.
Political credibility on the line after swoops

TONY Blair and Britain's security chiefs were yesterday desperately hoping that the counter-terrorism raids are a resounding success, knowing that their credibility is at stake.

In the political arena, Mr Blair was last night criticised for going on holiday at a time when Britain was facing its worst threat from terrorism.

The Prime Minister was briefed on the raids before he left for Barbados, where he is believed to staying at Sir Cliff Richard's villa .

The decision to leave John Prescott nominally in charge of the country in his absence was also questioned, after the Deputy Prime Minister was apparently excluded from emergency briefings on the night of the raids and was absent from a press conference early yesterday.

Mr Blair's decision to stay in the Caribbean was described as "extraordinary" by opposition politicians. He was urged to follow the example set by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister, who broke off his holiday yesterday to hold talks with security officials.

Stewart Hosie, the Scottish National Party's home affairs spokesman, said it was "absolutely shocking" that Mr Blair could countenance pressing ahead with his holiday plans if he had known about the terrorist threat in advance, particularly as thousands of holidaymakers had their own travel plans thrown into chaos.

"Our Prime Minister should leave Cliff Richard on his own summer holiday and get back to his desk in the UK," Mr Hosie said.

Perhaps in anticipation of a public backlash, Mr Blair has not ruled out coming back from holiday. A No 10 spokesman said he was "keeping in constant contact" and would stay up to date with events on the ground.

Meanwhile, Mr Prescott was markedly absent from a press conference as it emerged that John Reid, the Home Secretary, was chairing COBRA, the government's emergency response committee made up of police, security experts and ministers.

A spokeswoman for Mr Prescott, who has been hit by a series of scandals recently, said it was "ridiculous" to claim he was sidelined.

While politicians of all parties yesterday expressed confidence in the police and MI5, privately, security officials know the operation is politically vital for them.

In the wake of the Forest Gate raid in London earlier this year - which failed to produce any evidence of the chemical weapons the police initially warned of - many Muslim leaders and some MPs suspect the authorities of overstating the terrorist threat.

To counter that perception, officials are insistent that the latest arrests will be shown to have been justified, promising that all the men held will be brought to a full and successful criminal trial in due course.

In 2004, another high-profile anti-terrorism trial, in which a group of men were accused of planning mass murder using the poison ricin, failed to produce any terrorism convictions, resulting in a severe blow to MI5's reputation.
Appeals for calm as backlash feared

MINISTERS are braced for a fresh backlash against British Muslims following the foiled terror attacks.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, appealed for calm as he said there is a common cause "among all the people in this country from whatever background, religion or ethnic dimension".

Muslim leaders reacted with shock and scepticism to the news of the arrests of 21 men, believed to be mostly British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

Police are facing pressure to prove they are acting proportionately and basing their operations on credible intelligence.

Fahad Ansari, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said many Muslims would be regarding the police with scepticism.

"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," he said.

However, other representatives largely backed the police actions and pledged their co-operation.

Khurshid Ahmed, of the Commission for Racial Equality in Birmingham, where some of the arrests took place, said there was shock that young people could be actively involved, but also relief that a plot had been foiled.

Mohammad Sarwar, the Glasgow Labour MP, said the raids strengthened the need to recall parliament from its 76-day summer recess.
£10m-a-day disruption

THE disruption caused by the terrorist plot could cost the UK economy £10 million a day, it was feared yesterday.

Airline and travel shares slumped, with British Airways falling 5 per cent, wiping about £200 million off the value off the company. Low-cost rivals Ryanair and EasyJet were down 2 per cent.

Maurice Fitzpatrick, an analyst at Grant Thornton, said the disruption was likely to cost the UK economy at least £3.2 million for every hour of delay through lost productivity. "For an average delay of three hours, UK plc could lose £10 million per day," he said.

"The figure will rise dramatically, due to lost tourism revenue as incoming flights are cancelled and as a result of the expected downturn in foreign visitors."
UK threat level 'critical'

THE official assessment of the terrorist threat to Britain was yesterday set at "critical", indicating an attack is thought to be imminent.

The grading, the highest possible, is part of a new, simplified scale introduced last month in an effort to make intelligence assessments easier to understand.

When the five-point scale was established, the threat was set at "severe", the second highest level, indicating that officials believed an attack was "likely".

At the time, government sources and police alike believed the threat level would stay there for the foreseeable future.

The "critical" threat level was assessed by MI5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. A statement on MI5's website said: "This means that an attack is expected imminently."