NYT : No One Convicted of Terror Plot to Bomb Planes

No One Convicted of Terror Plot to Bomb Planes

By JOHN F. BURNS and ELAINE SCIOLINO | September 9, 2008

LONDON — A lengthy trial centering on what Scotland Yard called a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners ended Monday when the jury convicted three of eight defendants of conspiracy to commit murder.

But the jury failed to reach verdicts on the more serious charge of a conspiracy to have suicide bombers detonate soft-drink bottles filled with liquid explosives aboard seven airliners headed for the United States and Canada.

The failure to obtain convictions on the plane-bombing charge was a blow to counterterrorism officials in London and Washington, who had described the scheme as potentially the most devastating act of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks seven years ago this week. British and American experts had said that the plot had all the signs of an operation by Al Qaeda, and that it was conceived and organized in Pakistan.

The arrest in August 2006 of two dozen suspects, including the eight put on trial, set off a worldwide alarm in the airline industry and led to a tightening of airport security, including time-consuming restrictions on passengers carrying liquids and creams in their carry-on luggage that remain in force at most airports around the globe.

But the case was hampered from the beginning, prosecutors said, by an investigation that was cut short, by the conflicting demands of intelligence agencies, and by problems with introducing evidence in the courtroom. To protect sources and methods, the prosecution was unable to introduce material from British or foreign intelligence agencies. In addition, Britain does not allow information in court that has been gathered from domestic wiretaps.

The arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani descent who American, British and Pakistani officials said was a liaison to Al Qaeda, set off a series of events that led the British police to roll up the London-based cell far earlier than they had intended. The haste in making sweeping arrests made it hard for prosecutors to persuade the jury that the bomb plot had reached the stage at which an attack on airliners was imminent.

Partly as a result, prosecutors never convinced the jury that the suspects were prepared to strike immediately, or even that they had chosen planes as their targets. Nor did they convict a man whom they had accused of having links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said it might decide to call for a retrial of the case if it decides it might win convictions on the most serious charges. A decision on that is expected within weeks. In addition, a number of other suspects will face trial related to the plot.

The British government, keenly disappointed, put a positive gloss on the trial’s outcome. “I am indebted to the police and the security services, who, by successfully disrupting this group, have saved countless lives,” Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who is responsible for internal security, said in a statement.

The trial was one of the most protracted and complex ever held for a terrorism case in Britain, after what Scotland Yard described as one of the largest-scale criminal investigations ever mounted here.

After three months of evidence, the case against the eight men — all British Muslims aged 24 to 30, and six with family roots in Pakistan — went to the jury in late July. A two-week holiday break ordered by the judge was followed by what appeared to have been an impasse of more than three weeks among jurors on the most serious charges, even after the judge, David Calvert-Smith, allowed the jury to reach verdicts with at least 10 of the 12 jurors in agreement.

By exactly that margin, the jurors on Monday returned guilty verdicts on the murder conspiracy charges against three men who prosecutors said had been at the heart of the plot: Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, a husband and father who studied computer systems engineering; Assad Sarwar, 28, a college dropout who learned how to make the liquid hydrogen peroxide bomb in Pakistan; and Tanvir Hussain, 27, who helped in the purchase of materials and in making the suicide videos.

The defendants planned to drain 17-ounce plastic sports drink bottles by puncturing a tiny hole in the bottom, prosecutors said, then refilling the bottles with an explosive mix of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and food coloring to give the appearance of the original beverage.

The prosecution said the bottles were to have been resealed with instant glue, and then, once the bombers were aboard the flights, connected with detonators made of AA batteries filled with the explosive HMTD and disposable cameras acting as triggers. Scotland Yard said at the time of the arrests that it had found plastic drink bottles and large quantities of hydrogen peroxide on premises used by the defendants, along with “martyrdom” videos taped by six defendants, in the manner common among Islamic suicide bombers.

Also found was a computer memory stick belonging to Mr. Ali, who described himself in court as the leader of the plot, that had files with highlighted schedules for seven flights to New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal and Toronto between July and October 2006 aboard aircraft operated by American Airlines, United Airlines and Air Canada. The computer files included information on baggage rules, guidance as to what could be carried as hand luggage and information about Heathrow Airport in London, Scotland Yard said.

But the jury failed to reach verdicts against seven of the eight men on the most serious charge, that of conspiring “to murder persons unknown by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board trans-Atlantic passenger aircraft.” By finding three of the men guilty of plotting murder, but not of an airliner bombing conspiracy, the jury appeared to have concluded that they had the means and the intention of detonating bombs, but that the prosecution had failed to prove conclusively that they had planned to attack airliners.

Similarly, it failed to reach any decision on murder conspiracy charges against four other men described by prosecutors as foot soldiers in the plot: Ibrahim Savant, 27, a convert to Islam with Anglo-Indian roots, who worked in his British mother’s bookkeeping business; Umar Islam, 30, a convert and former Rastafarian of Caribbean origin; Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, a newly engaged former cellphone shop employee; and Waheed Zaman, 24, a former biomedical college student who once led his university’s Islamic organization.

Seven of the eight defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to create a public nuisance with their plan to produce and distribute the videos, and face long prison sentences.

British officials said a crucial role in the suspected plot was played by Mohammed Gulzar, 26, who declared his innocence throughout, and was the only defendant to be acquitted of all charges on Monday.

British intelligence and law enforcement officials say they believe that Mr. Gulzar was the facilitator between the plotters in London and Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, and pushed his co-conspirators to move forward more quickly with the attack.

The law enforcement officials said Mr. Gulzar was a close friend of Mr. Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani origin who was the main figure at the Pakistan end of the plot, according to British, American and Pakistani officials.

The officials said Mr. Rauf and Mr. Gulzar fled Britain for Pakistan after the murder of Mr. Rauf’s uncle in Birmingham in April 2002. But Mr. Rauf was arrested in Pakistan in August 2006, forcing the police in Britain to move against other figures in the plot sooner than they had wanted, and, in the end, weakening the prosecutors’ case. A further blow came when Mr. Fauf, facing extradition to Britain in the murder case, escaped from the Pakistani police last December after entering a mosque for prayers.

There were other weaknesses in the prosecution’s bid to prove that the men had an achievable plan to attack airliners. Among other things, the evidence failed to show that the defendants were prepared to strike immediately. There were doubts about whether they had the technical skills needed, including the ability to produce the concentrated version of hydrogen peroxide necessary to make the bombs effective, and to assemble them aboard aircraft in midflight.

The defense denied the men had chosen airplanes as their targets. No airline tickets had been bought. Some of the six who were accused of being suicide bombers had not obtained the “clean” passports, free of suspicious foreign stamps from Pakistan and elsewhere, that the prosecution said had been part of the planning for the attacks. Some of the suicide videos appeared unusually amateurish, and because of concerns not to disclose intelligence sources and methods no evidence was presented to support claims of a link to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

At the trial, Mr. Ali, the self-described plot leader, said the plan had been to stir public alarm by setting off minor blasts at the check-in areas of Heathrow’s Terminal 3 to protest British and American policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East and that there had been no intention to kill anybody. He said that the original target was the British Parliament, but that they had shifted to Heathrow after security at Westminster proved too tight.

Senior British and American officials have described Mr. Rauf as a protégé of Abu Faraj al-Libi, Qaeda’s director of operations until he was detained in Pakistan in 2005. After that, the officials said, operational control of the plot was taken over by Abu Ubaida al Masri, who was chief of operations for Al Qaeda until his death, the officials said.

British officials identified one of the people Mr. Gulzar met in South Africa and Britain as Mohammed Al Ghabra, suspected of being a Qaeda operative. British intelligence says it believes that Mr. Al Ghabra played an important role in the events leading up to the failed transit bombings in London on July 21, 2005, which took place two weeks after suicide bombings on London subway trains and a bus killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers.

Mr. Al Ghabra, a Syrian-born British citizen living in Britain, has been identified by British and American officials as a banker for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The officials say he has been instrumental in arranging travel for prospective suicide bombers in Pakistan and Iraq. The United States and Britain froze his financial assets in December 2006 because of his alleged activities in support of terrorism. He remains under 24-hour surveillance by British authorities.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Elaine Sciolino from Paris.