LAT : British Terrorism Case Parallels Others

British Terrorism Case Parallels Others

Trial in a suspected plot to bomb a nightclub or mall in 2004 involves alleged home-grown Islamic radicals with ties to militants in Pakistan.

By Sebastian Rotella | Times Staff Writer | September 1, 2006

LONDON — Bent on bringing holy war to their native Britain, the young extremists journeyed to Pakistan, finding expertise at training camps and inspiration in sit-downs with Al Qaeda figures.

The group returned with a strategy for massive attacks. They stockpiled explosive materials, discussed targets and communicated with Pakistani planners as the plot gathered momentum. But security forces, which had been watching and listening for months, swooped in and rounded them up.

That sounds like the alleged plot in which nearly a dozen Britons are charged with conspiring to blow up U.S.-bound planes over the Atlantic. Instead, it describes the prosecution's case here in a trial of seven Britons charged with plotting to bomb a shopping mall or nightclub more than two years ago.

Testimony during the last five months has revealed parallels to the airline case as well as last year's London transit bombings and an alleged plot against U.S. financial institutions involving British suspects.

The trial grew out of Operation Crevice, the code name for a complex investigation stretching from North America to Britain to Pakistan. The 2004 case seems a template for a string of plots that teamed rapidly radicalized cells dominated by Pakistani Britons with hardened, Pakistani-based militants affiliated with Al Qaeda, experts and investigators say.

The idea of a series of plots contributes to debate about the nature of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, whose fugitive leadership is largely based in Pakistan. Current thinking says that the fragmented core of the network has been reduced to playing an inspirational role. But the emerging picture in the Operation Crevice trial and the other cases suggests more direct involvement by a network that regroups and tries again after failing, experts say.

"This causes a reappraisal of what Al Qaeda central is capable of doing," a British law enforcement official said. "The subway bombings raised questions … and Operation Crevice raises similar questions. We had this idea that Al Qaeda had become less a network than an ideology…. But we are now asking significant questions about how much command and control Al Qaeda might still have."

The current trial could provide insight into the airline case because of similarities in the profiles of the suspects and because of alleged international connections.

Like the airline investigation, Operation Crevice was built on countless hours of surveillance. The jury at the Old Bailey courthouse has heard dramatic evidence from wiretaps in cars and homes. In a tape played in court in May, suspects talked in street slang about carrying out a massacre at a nightclub, the Ministry of Sound, contemptuously dismissing potential female victims as "slags."

"What about easy, easy stuff where you don't need no experience?" said Jawad Akbar, 22, a student whose dorm room was bugged by police. "You could get a job like this, for example, the biggest nightclub in central London where no one could ever turn around and say, 'Oh, they were innocent,' those slags dancing around. If you went for the social structure where every Tom, Dick and Harry goes on a Saturday night, yeah, that would be crazy, crazy thing, man."

"If you got a job in a bar, yeah, or club, say the Ministry of Sound, what are you planning to do there then?" asked Omar Khyam, 24, allegedly a central figure in the group.

"Blow the whole thing up," Akbar responded, according to the tape.

At the same time, the trial paints a portrait of fervent but somewhat improvisational extremists who rambled about hijackings, mass poisonings and other scenarios. They stored explosives and poison in a bedroom armoire in Pakistan. And Akbar said on tape that he was likely to "chicken out" of any suicide attack.

The likelihood of an attack may have been remote because of the omnipresent surveillance. Police covertly replaced a stash of 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate — allegedly stockpiled for a vehicle bombing — with dummy explosives.

But the suspects didn't think highly of the British security services. During another bugged conversation in Akbar's room, Khyam asked, "Do you think your room is monitored?"

"Nah, do you think that?" Akbar answered, according to the recording. "Do you know, I think we give them too much credit, bruv."

In a possible preview of a defense strategy in the airline case, defense lawyers accuse prosecutors of misrepresenting vague rage as a concrete plot. Moreover, the lawyers suggest that the star prosecution witness, Pakistani American Mohammed Junaid Babar, has exaggerated things to save his skin.

The 31-year-old Babar, who was arrested in New York and agreed to a plea bargain, is key to the case — and to understanding the web of linkages to others. Babar figured in an alleged plot, revealed in 2004, to attack U.S. financial institutions on the East Coast. Babar was present in March of that year at a Pakistani "summit" of Al Qaeda operatives involved, British and U.S. authorities say.

Moreover, Babar's testimony here placed the Operation Crevice suspects at a militant training camp in Pakistan near the Afghan border in July 2003.

That is significant because Mohamed Sidique Khan, the ringleader of last year's transit bombings, also traveled to that area for terrorism training in July 2003, according to a British government report.

Authorities have not said whether Khan was at the same camp. But he and another transit bomber had links to the Operation Crevice defendants, authorities say. And British investigators are examining suspected connections between the transit bombers and the suspects in last month's alleged airline plot, officials say.

Babar's narrative on the witness stand depicted the radicalization of a group of working- and middle-class British Muslims, ages 17 to 35 and mostly of Pakistani descent, who were disciples of extremist British clerics. In addition to the seven on trial here, a suspect has been charged in Canada.

Despite the public focus on the threat from spontaneous "home-grown" militants, court evidence indicates that contacts with Al Qaeda in Pakistan were vital, operationally and ideologically, to developing the alleged terrorist cell in 2002 and 2003.

Because he had moved to the Pakistani city of Lahore from the U.S. in 2001, Babar testified, his home in Pakistan served as a hub for his British accomplices. It provided shelter for militants and storage for bomb-related equipment, he said.

In addition, Khyam and a codefendant named Wahid Mahmoud had acquired militant contacts and training during previous trips, Babar testified. During the 2003 trip to the training camp near the city of Kohat, the suspects posed as tourists, taking photos and dressing in Western-style clothes, he said.

They tested ammonium nitrate-based bombs at the training camp, according to testimony by defendant Salahuddin Amin, 31. Amin said he did not consider himself a terrorist.

Afterward, Khyam said he was working for Abdul Hadi, whom he described as the No. 3 figure in Al Qaeda, according to testimony. Khyam made a 10-day trip to meet with Hadi's deputy in Pakistan's northern tribal area, Babar testified.

The meeting was about "what they were planning in the U.K.," Babar testified, adding that the Al Qaeda leader "wanted them to do multiple bombings … either simultaneously or on the same day."

There is ambiguity about the exact role of the so-called No. 3 Al Qaeda leader. Determining the ranks of figures in the loose and unstructured network, especially as it has been damaged and transformed in recent years, is a tricky business.

In the Operation Crevice case, British counter-terrorism officials say the group relied on planners in Pakistan to advance the plot and maintain order. Babar testified that he met with Hadi in late 2003, then traveled to Britain in early 2004 to smooth over "differences" that had cropped up among the plotters.

Police rounded up the group two months later as plans allegedly advanced toward a final phase.

More than two years later, the trial has begun to shed light on the workings of the larger network. But the heart of the mystery in this case, and others, remains in Pakistan, experts say. "In most of these cases, we don't know whether it was Al Qaeda itself or groups affiliated with it," said Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London think tank. "There are a lot of political games going on in that country. One doesn't know the whole picture."

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rotella@latimes.com

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Janet Stobart of The Times' London Bureau contributed to this report.