Wikibooks : Chemical synthesis/Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide

Chemical synthesis/Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection, as of september 6, 2007

Read Wikibooks:Risk disclaimer before attempting anything on this page. Some of the information here may be incorrect, unverified, and dangerous.

Required chemicals / apparatus

* 40mL 27.5% H2O2 solution (hydrogen peroxide)
* 25mL CH3COCH2CH3 (methyl ethyl ketone, butanone) [beware - this will dissolve most plastics. Use a glass syringe!]
* 5mL 98% H2SO4 (w:sulphuric acid)
* 200mL NaHCO3 solution
* 2x 100mL beaker
* 300mL beaker
* Glass syringe
* Glass rod
* Standard laboratory equipment
* Safety equipment, minimally including heavy leather gloves, impact-resistant goggles, hearing protection, and face shield.

Synthesis
(anhydrous dimeric form - appears as an oily liquid, more stable but more powerful)

As with other reactions that pose the risk of explosion, synthesis should not be performed in an enclosed area.

Place 25mL of methyl ethyl ketone in a 100mL beaker. Place this beaker in an ice bath at temperatures ranging preferrably from -10 to 5°C; the lower end of the described recommended temperature range is preferable. (To achieve this, you can use w:dry ice) Then, place 40mL of 27.5% H2O2 solution in a 100mL beaker. Place this beaker in an ice bath at temperatures ranging preferably from -10 to 5°C; the lower end of the described recommended temperature range is preferable. Wait for the temperature of both the methyl ethyl ketone and the temperature of the 27.5% H2O2 solution to fall into the recommended temperature range. Then, pour the beaker of methyl ethyl ketone into the beaker of hydrogen peroxide solution. Stir this solution for thirty seconds.

Add 5mL of 98% sulphuric acid slowly, drop by drop, taking care to keep temperatures within the recommended temperature range, into the beaker containing the monomeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide. If the temperature rises above 5°C, stop adding the sulphuric acid immediately.

After all of the sulphuric acid is added, wait 24 hours. It is highly recommended to attempt to keep the temperatures within the recommended temperature range during the entirety of every step (this is a very common mistake made when attempting to make trimeric acetone peroxide; most will not bother to keep the temperatures around zero degrees Celcius while waiting 24 hours or so for the reaction to complete; the result of that is far less stable acetone peroxide due to lower yields of the trimeric form and higher yields of the dimeric form).

The beaker should by now have two layers; a thick oily layer on the top, and a translucent white, relatively thin liquid on the bottom. The thick oily layer on top is the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide. All traces of acid must now be removed. Pour this beaker into a 300mL beaker. Then slowly add 200mL of NaHCO3 solution. Stir vigorously for five minutes; try to keep the size of the pockets of the oily liquid (the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide) as small as possible when stirring. Most of the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide will now begin to sink to the bottom of the beaker. Extract it with a syringe. Some will also remain on the surface; extract this also with a syringe (it is possible to isolate the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide by decantation, but this process can be very time consuming, frustrating, and you will not be able to harvest nearly as much of the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide as by the syringe extraction method).

If you wish to further deacidify the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, place it in an airtight aluminum container, in an ice bath (extremely important!). Leave the methyl ethyl ketone peroxide in the airtight aluminum container until bubbles no longer form. A safer alternative to this process is to add non-crumpled pieces of aluminum foil to the anhdrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (also in an ice bath); however this will often make it difficult to recollect all of the anhdrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, due to it sticking to the pieces of aluminum foil; it can be very difficult to remove from that surface.

Now pour the deacidified anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide into an open glass, or plastic (not made of a polyhydrocarbon plastic!). Let it stay in the open at temperatures around 15°C to allow most of the water to evaporate off. Now that the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide is dehydrated, it is ready for use.

Even though it is not recommended to store MEKP for a long time, if need be you can pour the anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide into a sealed plastic container (not made of a polyhydrocarbon plastic!) for storage. The reason for sealing it is to prevent loss of anhydrous dimeric methyl ethyl ketone peroxide due to evaporation. The lower the temperatures are during storage, the better, with the exception of temperatures so low that it freezes the anhydrous dimeric MEKP.

NYT : An Everyday Substance, Potent When Concentrated

An Everyday Substance, Potent When Concentrated

By KENNETH CHANG | September 6, 2007

Hydrogen peroxide, the chemical that the German police say two terrorism suspects planned to use to make bombs, is a simple molecule — two oxygen atoms and two hydrogen atoms — with myriad uses.

The hydrogen peroxide available in drugstores is just 3 percent hydrogen peroxide by weight; the other 97 percent is water. Such highly dilute solutions are used to bleach hair and disinfect wounds. But at greater concentrations, above 70 percent, hydrogen peroxide can be used as a rocket propellent — or as an ingredient for explosives.

The suspects arrested in Germany on Tuesday had obtained 1,500 pounds of moderately concentrated solution, made up of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide.

That concentration is potent enough to make at least one type of explosive. If the hydrogen peroxide were mixed with acetone — the primary ingredient of most nail polish removers — the resulting chemical reactions could generate significant amounts of the explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP.

TATP, which can be used as a detonator or as a primary explosive, has been used by Palestinian suicide bombers and is believed to have been the explosive in the attacks on the London transit system in 2005.

German officials said the peroxide could have been made into an explosive equivalent to 1,200 pounds of TNT. However, investigators have not said what other chemicals they found or what they believed the suspects planned to make.

Outside experts like George Smith, a senior fellow at the research organization GlobalSecurity.org, said that without additional information, it was not possible to guess the size of the threat. “That they accumulated so much material certainly deserved scrutiny,” Dr. Smith said.

Common industrial uses for 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution include the bleaching of wood pulp for paper production and the treatment of wastewater. “You have an everyday product, more or less, that is used under normal circumstances to improve people’s lives,” said William Gulledge, manager of the hydrogen peroxide panel at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group.

While 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution is readily available for purchase, even over the Internet, “I think 1,500 pounds would draw someone’s attention pretty quick,” Mr. Gulledge said.

The federal Department of Transportation regulates solutions containing 8 percent or more hydrogen peroxide by weight as hazardous materials.

NYT : German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot

German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot

By MARK LANDLER | September 6, 2007

This article was reported by Mark Landler, Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet, and written by Mr. Landler.

FRANKFURT, Sept. 5 — German authorities said Wednesday that they had stopped a major terrorist attack against American and German targets in this country, arresting three Islamic militants and seizing a large amount of potentially explosive chemicals and military-grade detonators.

Those arrested — two German citizens who had converted to Islam and a Turkish resident of Germany — were in the advanced stages of plotting bomb attacks that could have been deadlier than those that killed dozens in London and Madrid, the police and security officials said. At least five lesser figures are still being pursued, they said.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining an intense six-month investigation. She said the suspects had amassed hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical in the explosives used in the London suicide bombings of July 2005.

For months, Germany has been warning of a likely terrorist attack, and the government has been contemplating tightening surveillance and enforcement tactics that are now looser than elsewhere in Europe, in part because of Germany’s troubled 20th-century history.

Although officials spoke with confidence of the attack’s imminence and seriousness, they did not make fully clear the basis of their assertions. Europe has been the site of a number of devastating terrorist plots, but some have turned out later to be less than met the eye when announced.

If the announced details hold up under scrutiny, it means that Germany, like Britain, has become a target for sophisticated homegrown terrorism, and the case will fan the debate over the balance between civil liberties and public security. Previous German plots have been far smaller, carried out by foreigners, or focused outside of Germany, like the 9/11 attacks, which were hatched in Hamburg.

An American intelligence official said that the United States helped German authorities track the location of two of the German suspects by eavesdropping on their cellphone conversations as they moved out of training camps in Pakistan.

Ms. Harms also said that the two German converts had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and that the three suspects had about 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide, which they were preparing to move by van when arrested in an out-of-the-way village in western Germany on Tuesday afternoon. Security authorities in Europe have warned for some years that radical converts could pose a keen risk since they blend in easily to mainstream society.

The Turkish links in this case also trouble counterterrorism experts, who note that Germany has generally not had to contend with a radical element in its large Turkish Muslim minority.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a Turkish-German network,” said Guido Steinberg, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “And the fact that it is connected to a Turkish network in Pakistan is an even bigger problem.”

While the suspects were homegrown, the targets the authorities said they intended to attack were symbols of the enduring American presence in Germany.

Information that surfaced during the investigation, which included monitoring phone calls and tracking suspects movements, led the authorities to conclude that among the targets under consideration, were the Ramstein Air Base, a crucial transportation hub for the American military, and Frankfurt International Airport.

The 12 vats of hydrogen peroxide collected by the suspects, when mixed with other chemicals, could produce a bomb with a force equivalent to 1,200 pounds of TNT, officials said.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” said Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office.

Mr. Ziercke said the men belonged to a terrorist group that the police suspected had close ties to Al Qaeda, though he did not offer evidence of those links. Counterterrorism experts here expressed wariness, noting that in almost every major attack or suspected plot since 9/11, the role of Al Qaeda has been raised but rarely substantiated.

German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests — the fruits of an elaborate investigation involving more than 300 people. On Wednesday, police officers raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

But some politicians warned that the danger remained high. “The arrests yesterday are just evidence of how serious the situation here in Germany is,” said Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent legislator in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party.

The surveillance operation was so close that in July, officials said, the police managed to swap some of the tanks of hydrogen peroxide the suspects had gathered with tanks containing a far lesser concentration.

One of the suspects, whom police sources identified as Fritz Gelowicz, a 28-year-old German born in Munich, was detained in 2005 in a raid in a Muslim neighborhood in Bavaria. He was put under surveillance again in December 2006, after he was seen scouting an American military barracks in Hanau, according to court documents.

The police are investigating a German-Turkish man, an associate of Mr. Gelowicz’s and also a suspect in the plot, two security officials said. They said he was believed to be in Turkey.

Tuesday’s arrests were made at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a village of 800 tucked into the hills, 75 miles north of Frankfurt. The suspects had rented the house to store chemicals to make explosives, officials said. They were preparing to leave when the police swooped in.

One of the three men fled and, in a scuffle with a police officer, wrested a pistol from his holster and shot him in the hand before he was subdued, officials said.

A few had seen three young men walking through the village in recent days, but they did not arouse suspicion. Curinna Imuhl, 12, who lives near the rented house, said, “I thought no one was there; the shades were always down.”

On Tuesday, the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot. The German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots. Six of those suspects have already been released.

Ms. Harms, the federal prosecutor, said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union, a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

While this group has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe, it has claimed credit for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the United States and Israeli Embassies, in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The group has called for the overthrow of the secular government in Uzbekistan.

German officials have warned that the country was under threat of a terrorist attack because of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. They said they were particularly worried by reports of Germans taking part in terrorist training camps in Pakistan and returning to Germany to carry out attacks.

In Berlin, Chancellor Merkel said, “The lesson from this is the danger is not just abstract, it’s real.” The consequences of an attack, she added, would have been “indescribable.”

Mr. Ziercke said the United States aided German authorities. Another security official said the Americans tipped off the Germans to the existence of the Islamic Jihad Union.

President Bush, who is in Australia, was briefed on the arrests, said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

American officials, who have spoken publicly about Al Qaeda’s growing abilities to attack Western targets, say the group in Germany is likely to have ties to Al Qaeda’s operational figures in Pakistan. American spy agencies believe that Qaeda’s leaders have established a haven in Pakistan, where they have set up small compounds to train operatives for attacks on Western targets.

American military officials said the Germans contacted them on Tuesday evening to warn them about the plot. “This was a German-led investigation,” said Lt. Cmdr. Corey Barker, a spokesman for the United States European Command in Stuttgart. “We do appreciate their commitment to safeguarding us against a terrorist attack.”

Ramstein is the largest American air base in Germany and a hub for troops deploying to Eastern Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Commander Barker said the base had not lifted its force protection level, which is now at the second highest designation.

Frankfurt’s airport, the second busiest on the Continent after Charles de Gaulle in Paris, was operating normally, said an airport spokesman.

Germany narrowly missed a smaller terrorist attack in July 2006, when two suitcase bombs left on commuter trains in Cologne failed to explode. Officials said the two suspects in that attack, from Lebanon, had a fraction of the bomb-making chemicals amassed for this latest plot.

In June, Mr. Schäuble and his deputy, August Hanning, warned that the terrorist threat was comparable to that in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. That plot was hatched in Hamburg by Islamic militants posing as students.

Mr. Schäuble coupled his warning with a call for stricter anti-terrorism measures. He said he would like the police to be able to conduct surreptitious searches of computers belonging to people suspected of being terrorists.

In the past, some critics here have accused Mr. Schäuble of ratcheting up fears of terrorism in order to build support for his measures. But no such criticisms were voiced on Wednesday.

Mark Landler and Souad Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt, and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin. Reporting was contributed by Rhea Wessel from Oberschledorn, Germany, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Sydney, Australia.

Scotsman : Germans foil 'massive' bomb plot

Germans foil 'massive' bomb plot

DAVID MCHUGH AND ALLAN HALL IN BERLIN | September 5, 2007

THREE Islamic militants from an al-Qaeda influenced group have been arrested on suspicion of plotting imminent massive bomb attacks targeting Americans in Germany.

The three men - two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen linked to a group based in Central Asia - had about 700kg of hydrogen peroxide - enough to make a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT, German prosecutors said.

The same material was used by London's 21/7 bombers.

The men were arrested on Tuesday, the same day Danish police seized eight young Muslims they suspect of plotting a bomb attack and one week before the sixth anniversary of the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Monika Harms, a German federal prosecutor, said the suspects planned to attack institutions and establishments frequented by Americans in Germany, including discos, pubs and airports.

One possible target was the massive US air base at Ramstein - it serves as the main US logistical outpost to fuel the war in Iraq and is the arrival point for its badly wounded service personnel, most of whom are treated at the nearby Landstuhl military hospital.

Media reports also said that the men were planning attacks against Frankfurt airport.

"We were able to succeed in recognising and preventing the most serious and massive bombings," Ms Harms said.

Germany's GSG-9 anti- terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects on Tuesday at a holiday home in Oberschledorn, a village in central Germany.

The suspects, appearing behind closed doors yesterday at the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe, were ordered held pending trial.

A man identified as being the group's leader, Fritz G - Germany routinely does not issue the last names of criminal suspects - is 28 and comes from Ulm in southern Germany, where he is understood to have worked at the city's Islamic information centre after converting to Islam in the recent years.

The other German, Daniel S, 22, is also a Muslim convert and comes from Saarbrücken on the border with France. The third man is a Turk named as Adem Y, 29, who lives in Frankfurt.

Officials said the 35 per cent hydrogen peroxide solution could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb. "This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Jörg Ziercke, the head of the Federal Crime Office, Germany's equivalent of the FBI, said.

Prosecutors said the three had undergone training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the al-Qaeda influenced group.

"This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of US citizens," Mr Ziercke said.

The chancellor, Angela Merkel, thanked security officials for foiling the attack, and called the arrests a "very, very great success". She added: "This shows that terrorist dangers, in our country as well, are not abstract but are real."

Germany, which has forces stationed in Afghanistan, has been on high alert for attacks.

But concerns about an attack have mounted since two men of Lebanese origin tried to detonate crude bombs hidden in suitcases on trains last year.

"We are under threat," Wolfgang Schaeuble, the interior minister, said at a press conference in Berlin. "We have to remain vigilant."
OBSCURE BUT A 'REAL THREAT'

THE Islamic Jihad Union, named by Germany as being behind the major bomb plot, is an obscure militant movement whose origins are in Uzbekistan.

According to a think-tank, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the movement - also called the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG) - emerged in 2004 as a splinter faction from another central Asian organisation.

It claimed responsibility for suicide attacks that killed 47 people in April that year. Three months later, it killed at least two in attacks on the United States and Israeli embassies and the Uzbek prosecutor's office. The attacks cemented IJG's status as a real terrorist threat.


ANALYSIS: German al-Queda military detonators unleash new security fears

CLIVE FAIRWEATHER

THE arrest of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Germany is, on reflection, not that surprising. After all, the Germans provide a significant number of troops for the campaign in Afghanistan, while Frankfurt and Ramstein also act as an airbridge for US casualties returning from the Middle East.

The really significant fact is that military detonators have been found during the recent investigation and arrests. Producing home-made explosives or obtaining commercial material such as Semtex has never been a problem for terrorist groups; you only have to consult the internet, let alone travel to Pakistan. The huge problem for malcontents has always been finding detonators that have enough velocity to set off high-powered explosives in a timely manner. Only commercial or military detonators fit this bill and in this country, thanks to the IRA, stocks of detonators from quarries have become almost impossible to steal or obtain illegally. Hence the various cock-ups in London last July and latterly at Glasgow Airport, when amateur means were deployed.

Until now, the latest wave of Islamic terrorists in Europe has not been doing too well in the explosives department. However, if they have now sourced a covert supply of military detonators, the entire strategic picture in Europe could be about to change.

• Clive Fairweather is a former SAS deputy and Middle East adviser

The Standard (HK) : Germans `crack huge bomb plot'

Germans `crack huge bomb plot'

David McHugh | ASSOCIATED PRESS | September 06, 2007

Three suspected Islamic terrorists from an al-Qaeda-influenced group nursing a "profound hatred of US citizens" were arrested on suspicion of plotting imminent, massive bomb attacks targeting Americans in Germany, prosecutors said yesterday.

The three men - two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen linked to a group based in Central Asia - had 700 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, or enough to make a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT, prosecutors said.

"We were able to succeed in recognizing and preventing the most serious and massive bombings," said federal prosecutor Monika Harms, calling it "a good day for security in Germany."

She declined to name specific targets but said the suspects had an eye on institutions and establishments frequented by Americans in Germany, including discos, pubs and airports.

But citing security sources in Berlin, broadcaster Suedwestfunk said Frankfurt International Airport and United States' Ramstein Air Base were among targets.

Germany's elite GSG-9 anti- terrorist unit arrested two suspects at a vacation home in central Germany on Tuesday. A third suspect fled through a bathroom window but was apprehended about 300 meters away.

The suspects, appearing yesterday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, were ordered held pending trial.

Officials said the hydrogen peroxide solution, stored in a hideout, easily could have been mixed with other additives to produce a powerful bomb.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," said Joerg Ziercke, head of the Federal Crime Office.

The three suspects first came to the attention of authorities because they had been caught observing a US military facility in Hanau, near Frankfurt, at the end of 2006. Police were searching an Islamic information center in the town of Ulm in Baden-Wuerttemburg.

Prosecutors said three had undergone training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union and had formed a German cell of the al-Qaeda- influenced group. The Islamic Jihad Union is described as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist group with origins in that country.

"This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of US citizens," Ziercke said.

The three had no steady work and were collecting unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, investigators said.

It was another alarming turn of events following a failed train bombing last year and warnings that Germany's troop deployment in Afghanistan could make it vulnerable. German and American officials have warned of the possibility of a terrorist attack.

In July 2006, two gas bombs were placed on German commuter trains but did not explode. Officials said that attack was motivated by anger over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. Several suspects are on trial in Lebanon, and a Lebanese man has been charged in Germany.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a top legislator from Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats, noted the upcoming sixth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, as well as deliberations by the German parliament in the next few weeks over whether to extend its troop mandates in Afghanistan.

"We are in a highly sensitive period," he said.

News of the arrests came a day after Denmark's intelligence service arrested eight alleged Islamic militants around Copenhagen with links to senior al- Qaeda terrorists, saying it had thwarted a major attack.

Ziercke said that there were similarities to the group arrested in Denmark, but no direct connection has been established.

WaPo : Homemade, Cheap and Dangerous

Homemade, Cheap and Dangerous

Terror Cells Favor Simple Ingredients In Building Bombs

By Craig Whitlock | Washington Post Foreign Service | Thursday, July 5, 2007; Page A01

LONDON, July 4 -- The 39-page memo recovered from an al-Qaeda laptop computer in Pakistan three years ago read like an Idiot's Guide to Bombmaking. Forget military explosives or fancy detonators, it lectured. Instead, the manual advised a shopping trip to a hardware store or pharmacy, where all the necessary ingredients for a terrorist attack are stocked on the shelves.

"Make use of that which is available at your disposal and . . . bend it to suit your needs, (improvise) rather than waste valuable time becoming despondent over that which is not within your reach," counseled the author of the memo, Dhiren Barot, a British citizen who said he developed his keep-it-simple philosophy by "observing senior planners" at al-Qaeda training camps.

Barot, who was later captured near London and is serving a 30-year sentence, had envisioned an attack with multiple car bombs that would detonate liquid-gas cylinders encased in rusty nails -- a strategy with striking similarities to an attempt last week by a suspected terrorist cell to blow up three vehicles in London and Glasgow, Scotland.

Counterterrorism officials have warned for years that Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants have tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction, such as a nuclear device or chemical or biological weapons. In response, U.S. military and intelligence agencies have invested vast amounts of money to block their acquisition.

So far, however, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have relied almost solely on simple, homemade bombs crafted from everyday ingredients -- such as nail-polish remover and fertilizer -- when plotting attacks in Europe and the United States.

The makeshift bombs lack the destructive potential of the conventional explosives that rake Iraq on a daily basis. They are also less reliable, as demonstrated by the car bombs that failed to go off in London last week after the culprits tried to ignite them with detonators wired to cellphones.

But other attempts have generated plenty of mayhem and damage, including the kitchen-built backpack bombs that killed 52 people in the London public transit system on July 7, 2005.

"It makes no difference to your average person if somebody puts a car bomb out there that is crude or one that is sophisticated," said Chris Driver-Williams, a retired British major and military intelligence officer who studies explosive devices used by terrorist groups. "If it detonates, all of a sudden you've got a very serious device and one that has achieved exactly what the terrorists wanted."

The advantages of homemade explosives are that they are easy and cheap to manufacture, as well as difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect. According to one expert, the peroxide-based liquid explosives that an al-Qaeda cell allegedly intended to use to blow up nine transatlantic airliners last summer would have cost as little as $15 a bomb.

It is technically simple to make such explosives. Instructions are widely available on the Internet. Experts added, however, that it takes skill and sophistication to construct a viable bomb by adding timing devices, detonators or secondary charges.

Investigations have found evidence that most al-Qaeda cells involved in bombing plots in Europe have received training in camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or were tutored by graduates of those camps.

Among them: cell members involved in the July 7, 2005, bombings in Britain and a separate plot two weeks later that also targeted the London subway. The suspected ringleaders of the May 16, 2003, bombings in Casablanca were also al-Qaeda camp veterans who had experimented in explosives. Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in 2001, was taught how to build his shoe bomb in Afghanistan.

Stephen Swain, former head of the international counterterrorism unit at Scotland Yard in London, said the culprits in each case had been trained by seasoned al-Qaeda operatives "without a shadow of a doubt."

"It's a common thread throughout the entire theater of al-Qaeda-style operations," said Swain, who retired last year and is a senior consultant for Control Risks Group, an international security firm. "There's quite a lot of training going on in this regard."

Terrorist groups have been using homemade explosives for years. In February 1993, Islamic radicals drove a truck loaded with about 1,500 pounds of urea nitrate -- a fertilizer-based explosive -- and hydrogen-gas cylinders into a garage underneath the World Trade Center.

The bomb killed six people and injured more than 1,000. Investigators determined that the cell built the bomb in New Jersey by consulting manuals brought from Pakistan. Two years later, the ringleader of the plot, Ramzi Yousef, tried but failed to use homemade liquid explosives to down 11 airliners crossing the Pacific Ocean.

The same year, Timothy J. McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a truck bomb consisting of 5,000 pounds of fuel oil and fertilizer, killing 168 people.

Since then, it has become more difficult to purchase large quantities of fertilizer without attracting attention; sellers in the United States and many European countries are supposed to notify authorities of suspicious customers.

The last known attempt by al-Qaeda to construct a fertilizer-based bomb in Europe came in 2003, when a cell operative bought 1,200 pounds of bagged Kemira GrowHow fertilizer for about $200 from an agricultural supply store in Britain. The salesman, John Stone, later testified that he thought the transaction was strange because it was the wrong time of year to apply the substance and the buyer claimed to have only a small garden plot.

"I hope you're not going around bombing anything," Stone said he told the buyer half-jokingly, although the salesclerk did not notify police.

British authorities were tipped off soon after, however, by an employee at a rental-storage center where the cell was keeping the fertilizer. In April, five members of the group were convicted in the plot, known as Operation Crevice. Many European fertilizer manufacturers have since reduced the amount of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in their products.

Partly as a result, European and U.S. counterterrorism officials said terrorist cells are increasingly turning to peroxide-based explosives, which can be made in much smaller quantities from materials available at drugstores.

The most commonly used compound is triacetone triperoxide, or TATP. Primary ingredients for a homemade batch typically include acetone, which can be found in nail-polish remover, and hydrogen peroxide, a chemical used in hair-bleaching products.

TATP wields about 85 percent of the explosive power of TNT and can be made in a kitchen or bathroom. A dime-size amount of the explosive can ignite a fireball the size of a basketball.

The risky side of TATP is that it is highly unstable. A spark or light friction can detonate the explosive, making it extraordinarily difficult to handle. Experts and police said there have been numerous cases in which suspected terrorists -- as well as foolhardy amateur chemists -- have set off accidental explosions, resulting in death or severe injuries.

"You need to concentrate the chemicals," said Hans J. Michels, a professor of chemical engineering at Imperial College in London. "It's a filthy job and it's dangerous, but it can be done."

Despite the dangers, al-Qaeda cells have used peroxide-based explosives in more than a dozen plots in the past decade, including the July 7 and 21, 2005, London incidents, as well as attacks in Casablanca, Istanbul and the Indonesian island of Bali, according to counterterrorism officials. Danish police also discovered TATP in September during the arrest of seven terrorism suspects in Odense.

In crystalline form, TATP looks like powdered sugar and is difficult to detect in airports; security officials need to examine an exposed surface with a swab kit or other tester to determine its presence.

"TATP and peroxide-based explosives are concern number one for the aviation industry," said Ehud Keinan, a chemistry professor at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and a leading researcher on the substance. "It will take some time before we are protected. Right now, we are not."

Reached by telephone in Paris, where he was scheduled to give a lecture about TATP on Wednesday at an international conference, Keinan said he often carries a small sample of the volatile compound in his carry-on luggage when he flies -- just to test airport security. "Nobody ever stops me," he said.

When asked if it might be dangerous to sit next to him on a plane, he said, "If you know how to take care of it, it's okay. If you don't know what you're doing, you're in trouble."

U.S. Homeland Security officials have said terrorism suspects arrested last August in Britain on charges that they were plotting to blow up several transatlantic airliners might have been planning to smuggle on board TATP or a related compound, HMTD, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. Experts said it would take as little as one or two quarts of those explosives to down a large plane.

TATP was discovered in the late 19th century but was deemed to have no industrial or commercial applications because it was so unstable. Researchers generally ignored the substance until 1980, when Palestinian fighters used it for the first time in a bomb in Israel.

Palestinian bombers have used it ever since. TATP was used for the first time in an attack in Europe in July 1994, when Palestinians exploded a car bomb outside the Israeli Embassy in London.

U.S. and European counterterrorism investigators paid limited attention to the explosive until the July 2005 bombings in London. Afterward, the New York City Police Department built an exact replica of the apartment in Leeds, England, that the July 7 conspirators allegedly used to manufacture their backpack bombs.

Hugh O'Rourke, deputy inspector of the NYPD counterterrorism division, said the police department wanted to show beat officers what a kitchen-counter TATP production line would look like. He said it is easy to mistake the white powder and its cooking tools -- such as pool cleaners, large tubs or commercial-size fans -- for a common drug lab.

"Patrol cops see a lot of white powder, think it's crack, and want to touch it and package it," which could easily result in an explosion, he said. "We don't want them doing that."

Muslim News : Key air bomb suspect claims innocence

Key air bomb suspect claims innocence

Brief news rest of the World | Issue 213, 26 January 2007 | 6 Muharram 1428

A “key suspect” in the alleged terror plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was escorted to a court in Pakistan on December 21.

Rashid Rauf, 25 was arrested by Pakistani police in August, sparking a massive anti-terror operation across Britain. Rauf, from Birmingham, claimed he had been framed by the authorities.

Police in the Midlands want to question him about the murder of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, in April 2002. Rauf, who has dual citizenship, disappeared shortly afterwards.

His arrest in Pakistan last August triggered raids by police across Britain that ended in the arrest of 24 suspects. Seven others, including two Britons, were held in Pakistan.

This led to a crackdown on security in the UK and US airports, with all liquids banned from hand luggage.

Prosecutors alleged Rauf was in possession of 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide, intended to be used to blow up jets. He claimed they were for the treatment of wounds.

He faces civil charges of possessing explosives and forging travel and identity documents.

Officials say Rauf admits to having visited Afghanistan, attended militant training camps and to have met an aide of Ayman, Al Qa’ida’s al-Zawahiri.

Pakistani officials claim he admitted during questioning to meeting Al Qa’ida’s number three, Abu Faraj al-Libbi.

Pakistani human rights groups say he was tortured.

BBC : UK 'plot' terror charge dropped

UK 'plot' terror charge dropped

BBC News | December 13, 2006

A Pakistani judge has ruled there is not enough evidence to try a key suspect in an alleged airline bomb plot on terrorism charges.

He has moved the case of Rashid Rauf, a Briton, from an anti-terrorism court to a regular court, where he faces lesser charges such as forgery.

Pakistan has presented Mr Rauf as one of the ringleaders behind the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London.

The British authorities say they foiled it with Pakistan's help in August.

'Explosives'
The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the UK of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights.

The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure.

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

As well as forgery charges, Mr Rauf has also been charged with carrying explosives.

But his lawyer says police evidence amounts only to bottles of hydrogen peroxide found in his possession.

Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant that can be used for bomb-making if other chemicals are added.

'Suspected conspiracy'

In August, the British government requested the extradition of Mr Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani origin, in connection with a murder committed in 2002.

Scotland Yard declined to discuss which murder case the request related to.

The government in Pakistan, which has no extradition treaty with the UK, said it was considering the request.

Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan earlier that month over the alleged plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

He has been described by Pakistan's government as a "key person" in the "suspected conspiracy".

Houston Chronicle : 2 more charged in alleged plane plot

2 more charged in alleged plane plot

By DAVID STRINGER | Associated Press Writer | September 6, 2006

LONDON — Authorities charged two more suspects Wednesday in an alleged plot to blow up passenger-laden jetliners bound for the United States, bringing to 17 the number formally charged.

Three other suspects were released. The five have been held for nearly 28 days without being charged _ the maximum length of time allowed under Britain's new anti-terrorism laws.

Police said the two suspects, Donald Douglas Stewart Whyte and Muhammed Usman Saddique, 24, were charged with preparing an act of terrorism.

The five suspects were rounded up with about two dozen others in raids on Aug. 9-10 into the alleged plot to assemble and detonate improvised explosives on board as many as 10 U.S.-bound planes carrying hundreds of passengers. Eight others have since been released.

The purported attack would have caused mass murder on an "unimaginable scale," police as said they announced arrests in early August _ leading to major terror alerts in the United States and Britain, and causing major disruptions to air travel.

Eleven suspects have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder and also with preparing acts of terrorism. Whyte and Saddique are also charged with preparing terrorism acts. Four others are charged with lesser offenses, including withholding information about planned terrorism.

Prosecutor Colin Gibbs told a hearing at London's Central Criminal Court on Monday that 11 suspects facing the most serious charges would not be brought to trial before 2008 as officials sift through evidence from across the world.

Investigators continue to study evidence including alleged explosive materials, computers, travel and phone records and other documents, Gibbs said.

Peter Clarke, London's chief counterterrorism detective, has disclosed that police seized hydrogen peroxide, bomb-making components and six martyrdom videos during searches of 70 homes, businesses, vehicles and open spaces, including a stretch of woods in High Wycombe.

British Home Secretary John Reid has signaled he now intends to seek parliamentary support to extend the maximum detention limit for people arrested on suspicion of terrorism beyond 28 days.

Lawmakers agreed on the limit last December, after Prime Minister Tony Blair failed to persuade legislators to agree to a 90-day detention period _ his first ever defeat in Britain's House of Commons.

© 2006 The Associated Press

Green Left Weekly : BRITAIN: Doubts multiply over 'terror plot’

BRITAIN: Doubts multiply over 'terror plot’

by Norm Dixon | September 6, 2006

The “foiling” of an alleged “terror plot” to bring down passenger planes between Britain and the United States has revealed the existence of a highly coordinated international network that aims to spread public panic and create distrust between communities in order to undermine hard-fought-for freedoms. The seat of this conspiracy is not in the working-class neighbourhoods of London, but in the corridors of power in Downing Street and Washington, and in the plush suites of the media moguls’ HQs.

As of August 29, 11 men had been formally charged with conspiracy to murder and “preparing acts of terrorism”. Three others were charged with failing to tell the authorities about the alleged plans, and a 17-year-old has been charged with possessing materials “useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism”. All say they are innocent. Five people remain in custody without charge under the British Labour government’s harsh “anti-terror” detention laws and, so far, four others have been released without charge.

The official charge sheets add little to the accusations made by police at the time of the arrests in London, Birmingham and High Wycombe on August 10. Following the early morning raids by hundreds of police on up to 50 homes and businesses, London’s Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner Paul Stephenson declared that “untold death and destruction” and “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” had been thwarted. “We believe that the terrorists’ aim was to smuggle explosives on to planes in hand luggage to detonate them in flight”, he alleged.

In Washington, US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff provided the starting point for the more spectacular “off the record” claims by anonymous officials. “It was sophisticated, it had a lot of members and it was international in scope”, Associated Press quoted Chertoff on August 10. “It was in some respects suggestive” of an al Qaeda plot. He also claimed that the attack plans, to be carried out with bomb components “disguised as beverages, electronic devices and other common objects”, were “close to execution stage”.

In the following days, the Western media disseminated a vast array of unsubstantiated (and often conflicting) accusations by anonymous government, police and intelligence “sources”, each more hair raising than the last. These were dutifully repeated and elaborated on by an army of media-appointed security “analysts”, “experts” and “commentators”, then regurgitated as established fact by the fashion parade of air-headed TV anchors and hosts.

Doubts, questions multiply

Yet almost from the moment the arrests hit the headlines, big holes began to develop in the propaganda against the detainees, and doubts about the extent of the “terror plot” — and even whether it ever existed — have multiplied.

It is now clear that the claim that an attack was “imminent” was completely false. No airline reservations had been made or tickets purchased by the accused; several didn’t even have passports. No bombs had been constructed.

The August 28 New York Times reported on British officials backtracking on significant aspects of the case and admitted that “investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated”. British Home Secretary John Reid’s August 20 assertion on the US ABC program This Week that it is “relatively simple to make quite an effective bomb” on an aircraft has been thoroughly discredited.

The August 19 Guardian reported that “police sources have confirmed that the alleged plot involved the use of TATP, triacetone triperoxide ... This has led to speculation that [hydrogen] peroxide, acetone and sulphuric acid might have been disguised as bottles of drink to get through hand baggage checks. Forensic explosives experts say if this was the case the liquids would have had to be mixed on the plane to attain the crystallised TATP explosive.”

However, as Gerry Murray from the Forensic Science Agency in Northern Ireland told the Guardian, “this would be very difficult, particularly if carried out in the toilet of a passenger jet. “The liquids have to be kept at freezing point when they are mixed and the TATP crystals must be dried before being ignited, a process which could take several hours. Some 250g (9oz) of solid TATP would be needed for a substantial explosion, but ... if the individual had never made the explosive before he would need a great deal of luck to manufacture it on a plane.”

The official charges against those accused of planning to construct a bomb mention only the possession of hydrogen peroxide, found under most people’s kitchen sinks, and unspecified electronic devices. But as former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray pointed out in an August 17 post on his website(), “the allegation may have been concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any actual bombs. Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products [a common ingredient of which is hydrogen peroxide]. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce — as they have whispered to the media in this case — that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar, doesn’t it?”

'Pakistani link’ disappears

But the biggest blow to the “unofficial” government-media tag team’s case has been the collapse of the “Pakistani link” between the plotters and al Qaeda. Without a shred of evidence, article after article quoted US officials, unnamed government “sources” and sundry “experts” declaring that the alleged plot bore the “hallmark” (or “footprint” or “fingerprints”) of al Qaeda. It was to be the “real deal” (a phrase that really caught on among TV’s Kens and Barbies), “another 9/11”. A day after the arrests, the British Independent baldly stated that a “British-based al Qaeda cell” was behind the plot.

Based on yet more anonymous “sources”, this time from Pakistan’s notorious secret police agency the ISI, as well as statements from Pakistan’s military dictatorship, the Western media was awash with claims that the arrests in Britain were triggered by Pakistan’s detention on August 9 of Rashid Rauf, a dual British-Pakistan citizen resident in Pakistan since 2002. Rashid’s brother Tayib was among the 24 detained on August 10.

For two weeks, almost every media report claimed that Rashid had “links” to al Qaeda. Rashid Rauf is “a key al Qaeda operative”, Islamabad’s foreign minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao told the August 12 NYT. “American officials in Washington concurred that Mr Rauf was believed to be the principal facilitator [of] the plot”, the newspaper reported. The August 17 NYT reported that “a former Pakistani official with close ties to intelligence agencies ... said Rauf had 'longstanding links with [the outlawed Kashmir terrorist organisation] Jaish-e-Mohammed and also had al Qaeda connections”. The official cited “frequent calls” from those in Britain under surveillance (i.e., his brother Tayib) as evidence for his role.

Not to be outdone, the August 18 Guardian wrote, “Pakistani security sources claimed that the alleged plot had been sanctioned by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man believed to be al Qaeda’s second-in-command ... a senior official said yesterday: 'We have reason to believe that it was al Qaeda sanctioned and was probably cleared by al-Zawahiri.’” The August 19 British Daily Mail went even further, claiming on the say-so of unnamed ISI sources that Rashid “went to Afghanistan twice, where he made contact with senior al Qaeda commanders”.

Meanwhile, the August 18 Scotsman developed its unique version of events: “An al Qaeda operative who masterminded the alleged plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic is hiding in mountainous terrain in north-eastern Afghanistan, a Pakistan intelligence official has claimed ... The suspect allegedly exchanged messages, carried by a courier, with detained British national Rashid Rauf ... The wanted al Qaeda operative is also said to be a close aide to Egyptian-born al-Qaeda No2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, the official said. Detained terror suspects have told interrogators that al-Zawahiri probably approved the plan to blow up passenger planes.”

The August 20 NYT, in a detailed version of the tale, reported that a “British police official, who has been briefed on the inquiry”, claimed that the Rauf family had “been flagged red for months” for its “links with extremist groups in Pakistan that ... work hand in glove with al Qaeda”. According to the police source, authorities saw Tayib as the leader of the plot in Britain and Rashid as the connection to Pakistan.

Further into the article, it became clear that the tenuous Rauf family “links” with “extremist groups” in Pakistan and al Qaeda were little more than guilt by association. The NYT wrote: “About a year after arriving in Pakistan, Rashid Rauf married and later settled in ... Bahawalpur, which is also the home of [Jaish-e-Mohammed], one of the most extreme Islamist groups in Pakistan, with strong ties to al Qaeda. His sister-in-law is married to the brother of the group’s founder ...”

On August 23, Tayib Rauf was quietly released without charge. On August 28, the government announced that it had requested the extradition of Rashid Rauf from Pakistan. However, the request was not related to the alleged terror plot, but to an investigation into the murder of a relative in 2002.

Exploiting 'terror’

Following the arrests, onerous “security” measures were immediately imposed on airline travellers. Hand baggage was banned on flights out of Britain. All liquids, lotions and gels were banned. Baby milk and essential medicines were allowed only if their owners tasted them in front of airline or security officials.

In the US, the Homeland Security Warning System was set, for the first time, at “red alert”, which indicates a “severe risk of terrorist attacks”, and in Britain the threat level was raised to critical.

Yet all these measures took place after the arrests of all the “main suspects”. This prompted the British Guardian on August 19 to conclude: “It seems the measures forced upon British airports for several days were unnecessary. Police sources and the government indicated that if they were looking for anyone else those individuals were peripheral to the inquiry.”

Senior US and British government officials and the capitalist media seized on the alleged “al Qaeda” terror plot to opportunistically incite fear and panic among the general public, and to exploit the chaos and tension to shore up the flagging credibility of the unpopular US-British war in Iraq and Israel’s US-British-backed carnage in Lebanon.

US and British politicians also pressed for more draconian detention and spying powers, arguing that civil liberties need to be curbed to fight “terror”. On August 18, US President George Bush announced that he would pursue congressional approval for warrantless phonetapping. In Britain, the Labour government is again seeking the power to detain people suspected of terrorism for 90 days before being charged (currently 28 days), and Washington is pushing to be able to hold people without charge for 28 days, up from the present domestic norm of around 48 hours.

From Green Left Weekly, September 6, 2006.

Daily News : Aircraft Bomb Plot Suspects Won't Face Trial Before 2008, Prosecutors Say

Aircraft bomb plot suspects won't face trial before 2008, prosecutors say

AP | September 5, 2006

LONDON -- Suspects alleged to have plotted to bomb U.S.-bound airliners will not be brought to trial before 2008 as officials sift through evidence from across the world, prosecutors said -- a delay that will keep key details of the case secret for almost two years.

Though normally tightlipped, British detectives have broken with tradition to reveal some evidence, their brief statements have done little to illuminate an initial warning from London's Metropolitan Police that it had foiled a plan to commit murder on an unimaginable scale.

Lawyers and intelligence experts agree that delays in bringing terror cases to trial are inevitable given the complexity of the evidence and global scale of inquiries -- but say withholding information for prolonged periods could dent the public's trust in the police and government.

The repercussions of keeping a suspect in high-security custody only to have them later found innocent could also be grave, lawyers warn.

Eight men accused of conspiracy to commit murder and preparing to commit terrorism over the alleged aircraft plot appeared in court Monday and were told by a prosecutor they are unlikely to face trial until 2008.

Prosecutor Colin Gibbs told London's Central Criminal Court Monday there would be no trial before January 2008, and it would most likely be around Easter -- which falls on March 23 that year.

Tanvir Hussain, 25; Umar Islam, 28; Arafat Khan, 25; Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25; Ibrahim Savant, 25; Waheed Zaman, 22; Assad Ali Sarwar, 26; and Adam Khatib, 19, all appeared by video link from prison.

None of the eight -- all British Muslims -- applied for bail during the brief hearing. They were ordered to be returned to custody pending a hearing on Sept. 18.

Gibbs told the court that their trial would be delayed as detailed studies of items recovered in police raids -- including alleged explosive materials, computers, phone records and documents -- could take several months to complete.

Compiling details of a suspect's travel, phone records or connections with other known terrorist suspects is a painstaking task and often relies on cooperation with authorities in multiple countries, said Paul Wilkinson, director of Scotland's Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

"Investigations are often dependent on how well-equipped authorities in a particular country are to assist -- in some cases it might take months to get the information they are seeking, in others it might be never," Wilkinson said.

"It is not unusual for investigators to take a long time to prepare their case, the important thing is they establish with meticulous care whether the suspect is guilty of the alleged crime."

Wilkinson acknowledged long delays before a trial can fuel speculation about a case, but said since the London transport bombings last July the British public had become more understanding of the work needed to bring suspects to court.

Peter Clarke, London's chief counterterrorism officer, has disclosed that police seized hydrogen peroxide, bomb-making components and six martyrdom videos during searches at 70 locations in connection with the alleged airliner plot.

It was an unusual decision by Britain's usually guarded law enforcement authorities, but Clarke said he believed there was a duty to recognize a public need for information, despite the country's strict laws on disclosing case details before a trial takes place.

"That was an important step and it helps the public realize that this case is not an invention of the police and government as they await the trial," Wilkinson said

Clarke had complained earlier this year that British laws had prevented him for three years from explaining to the public why officers had carried out a high-profile raid on a London mosque.

Details were disclosed in February, when radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was jailed for seven years for inciting followers to kill non-Muslims.

Civil liberties groups acknowledge terrorism cases can involve lengthy evidence gathering, but are concerned for suspects who may eventually be proven innocent after spending years detained in high-security prison cells.

"If the suspects are found guilty, the time spent held in custody is discounted from their sentence -- but that's no consolation if they are found innocent," said lawyer James Welch, head of legal affairs at civil rights campaign group Liberty.

"It is down to judges to protect the interests of the accused and to make sure prosecutors do not delay proceedings for any longer than strictly necessary."

Prosecutors rounded up 25 people in raids over the alleged airliner plot on Aug. 9-10 and have so far charged 15 people with offenses. Five have been released and investigators have until Wednesday to question five others.

IHT : Aircraft bomb plot suspects won't face trial before 2008, prosecutors say

Aircraft bomb plot suspects won't face trial before 2008, prosecutors say

The Associated Press | September 4, 2006

LONDON Suspects alleged to have plotted to bomb U.S.-bound airliners will not be brought to trial before 2008 as officials sift through evidence from across the world, prosecutors said Monday -- a delay that will keep key details of the case secret for almost two years.

Though normally tightlipped British detectives have broken with tradition to reveal some evidence, their brief statements have done little to illuminate an initial warning from London's Metropolitan Police that it had foiled a plan to commit murder on an unimaginable scale.

Lawyers and intelligence experts agree that delays in bringing terror cases to trial are inevitable given the complexity of the evidence and global scale of inquiries — but say withholding information for prolonged periods could dent the public's trust in the police and government.

The repercussions of keeping a suspect in high-security custody only to have them later found innocent could also be grave, lawyers warn.

Eight men accused of conspiracy to commit murder and preparing to commit terrorism over the alleged aircraft plot appeared in court Monday and were told by a prosecutor they are unlikely to be face trial until 2008.

Prosecutor Colin Gibbs told London's Central Criminal Court there would be no trial before January 2008, and it would most likely be around Easter — which falls on March 23 that year.

Tanvir Hussain, 25; Umar Islam, 28; Arafat Khan, 25; Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25; Ibrahim Savant, 25; Waheed Zaman, 22; Assad Ali Sarwar, 26; and Adam Khatib, 19, all appeared by video link from prison.

None of the eight — all British Muslims — applied for bail during the brief hearing. They were ordered to be returned to custody pending a hearing on Sept. 18.

Gibbs told the court that their trial would be delayed as detailed studies of items recovered in police raids — including alleged explosive materials, computers, phone records and documents — could take several months to complete.

Compiling details of a suspect's travel, phone records or connections with other known terrorist suspects is a painstaking task and often relies on cooperation with authorities in multiple countries, said Paul Wilkinson, director of Scotland's Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

"Investigations are often dependent on how well equipped authorities in a particular country are to assist — in some cases it might take months to get the information they are seeking, in others it might be never," Wilkinson said.

"It is not unusual for investigators to take a long time to prepare their case, the important thing is they establish with meticulous care whether the suspect is guilty of the alleged crime."

Wilkinson acknowledged long delays before a trial can fuel speculation about a case, but said since the London transport bombings last July the British public had become more understanding of the work needed to bring suspects to court.

Peter Clarke, London's chief counterterrorism officer, has disclosed that police seized hydrogen peroxide, bomb-making components and six martyrdom videos during searches at 70 locations in connection with the alleged airliner plot.

It was an unusual decision by Britain's usually guarded law enforcement authorities, but Clarke said he believed there was a duty to recognize a public need for information, despite the country's strict laws on disclosing case details before a trial takes place.

"That was an important step and it helps the public realize that this case is not an invention of the police and government as they await the trial," Wilkinson said

Clarke had complained earlier this year that British laws had prevented him for three years from explaining to the public why officers had carried out a high-profile raid on a London mosque.

Details were disclosed in February, when radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was jailed for seven years for inciting followers to kill non-Muslims.

Civil liberties groups acknowledge terrorism cases can involve lengthy evidence gathering, but are concerned for suspects who may eventually be proven innocent after spending years detained in high-security prison cells.

"If the suspects are found guilty, the time spent held in custody is discounted from their sentence — but that's no consolation if they are found innocent," said lawyer James Welch, head of legal affairs at civil rights campaign group Liberty.

"It is down to judges to protect the interests of the accused and to make sure prosecutors do not delay proceedings for any longer than strictly necessary."

Prosecutors rounded up 25 people in raids over the alleged airliner plot on Aug. 9-10 and have so far charged 15 people with offenses. Five have been released and investigators have until Wednesday to question five others.

OpEd News : CENSORED: The NY Times 'Terror Plot Expose' They Don't Want You (Brits) to Read

CENSORED: The NY Times "Terror Plot" Expose They Don't Want You (Brits) to Read

by Nafeez Ahmed | September 2, 2006

On 28th August 2006, the New York Times printed an investigative story on that month's 10/8 "terror plot", undermining the claims of US and British government officials, and suggesting that details had been exaggerated beyond all proportion for political reasons. The article was also published online here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/europe/28plot.html

But interested British readers quickly discovered that they had been denied access to the article. Instead they discovered the following web message:

"This Article Is Unavailable

On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."

Even printed copies of the newspaper destined for the UK were scrubbed. Apparently for strictly legal reasons.

In fact, the New York Times' decision to self-censor its own expose from the British readership is, like the "terror plot" itself, more likely to have been based on reasons of political expedience.

Consider, for instance, the confident declaration of Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, that the goal of the apprehended suspects in plotting the attack was "mass murder on an unimaginable scale." Prejudicial to the case Mr. Stephenson? In similar vein, on the very day of the arrests, other officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. In Britain, the threat level was raised to its highest, "critical", signalling an imminent terrorist attack, while Home Secretary Dr. John Reid talked repeatedly of the likelihood of an immediate strike. Such pronouncements were repeated in the US. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that the plot was "getting really quite close to the execution stage."

Let's be clear on this. These were not qualified, tentative descriptions of suspicions about a possible plot. These were definitive, unqualified proclamations about having detected and successfully foiled an imminent al-Qaeda strike to blow up about 10 civilian planes using liquid explosives to be manufactured on board. So much so that Dr. Reid was rebuked by the Attorney-General for possibly prejudicing the trial of the arrested individuals.

Possibly?

My own research of public record sources published Monday 21st August, "The Truth about the 'Terror Plot'... and the new pseudo-terrorism", fundamentally undermines the official narrative. My findings, like that of the NY Times article, do not prejudice any trial -- but they do prejudice the standards of political convenience adopted by British and American officials, whereby their repeated distortions, exaggerations and outright fabrications about the "terror plot" have been used to justify government attempts to push for suspension of sections of the Human Rights Act 1998, and to drastically increase draconian anti-terror powers.

For this reason, publication of the latest evidence undermining the government's prejudicial claims serves not to create further prejudice, but to correct the lies and distortions that have already been widely disseminated and swallowed whole by an increasingly pathetic and subservient media, that remains unable to learn from the pattern of deceit long established in examples like the non-existent "Ricin Plot" (as former British Ambassador Craig Murray says, "there was no ricin; and there was no plot"). What the new evidence, indeed, demonstrates quite clearly, is that the British government, deliberately, consciously, pretended that there was an imminent threat from a plot which, it knew all too well, barely existed.

Therefore, for reasons of urgent public interest and in order to help correct the prejudicial distortions printed and aired repeatedly by the media on the basis of the false statements of our purported political representatives, I am posting the New York Times article in full, online, for the first time (see Annex below). And I would urge you all to re-post everywhere you can.

A number of points within the article, however, are worth highlighting. The New York Times points out, for instance, that according to "five senior British officials... the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike."

Unfortunately, this "fear" also had little basis in actual evidence. Consider the fact that "British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval." One of the men had apparently looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the US (a crime for any British Muslim?), but investigators confirmed that "the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets." Supposed "bomb-making equipment" described blandly as "chemicals" and "electrical components" (meaning household products and MP3 players) was found "five days after the
arrests," not before.

"In fact," continues the NY Times, "two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated."

Speculative and exaggerated is a rather polite term, some might say. "In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police were still investigating the basics: 'the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be attacked.'" So what did they know about this alleged plot?

Not very much really. Here we get to the really "prejudicial" part. "Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne."

In my 21st August analysis, I had already raised fatal questions about the technical viability of the "terror plot" scenario. So did, apparently, "a chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality." Thus while officials and experts are cited as generally agreeing that "the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters", they also add that "questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time." So perhaps some of these people were extremists, possibly involved in criminal activity, possibly up to no good -- but the "terror plot" scenario remains fundamentally questionable.

As Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department told America's newspaper of record: "In retrospect, there may have been too much hyperventilating going on."

Hyperventilating is not quite the word I would use. "Bullshitting", appears to be a more fitting, if less polite, description.

Also consistent with what I wrote more than a week ago, the NY Times quoted British officials saying "many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready." I had already noted that the Brits didn't want to move on the suspects due to the paucity of evidence. "The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a 'key figure' in the plot."

But Rauf had been tortured by Pakistani interrogators, according to the Pakistani Human Rights Commission. Which means the central source for the details about the plot are inadmissible by law. "Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first". What the Times doesn't mention is that the impetus for the Pakistanis to move came from the Americans. "The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot."

Our boys in the police and intelligence services, in other words, saw no reason to do anything. But the Americans did. And in doing so, they compromised an ongoing intelligence operation, just so they could manufacture a false "intelligence success". It seems, moreover, that our government didn't only lie to its people. It also lied to its friends. "The plotters received a very short message to 'Go now,' " Franco Frattini, the European Union's security commissioner, told the NY Times. He had been briefed by Dr. Reid. "I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists", he said.

The message, folks, didn't exist. "A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit", reported the NY Times. In other words, it didn't say 'Go now'. It said something else, far more ambiguous. But that didn't stop Dr. Reid from telling everybody the opposite. Meanwhile, "Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke declined repeated requests for interviews." What a surprise. Two weeks after they had chorused a story of an imminent strike creating death on an unprecedented scale even worse than 9/11, "senior officials here [in the US] characterized the remarks as unfortunate."

Most people, I fear, would characterise those remarks in more damning terms.

Has anyone, by the way, noted the frequency with which anonymous British officials have been sourced for this story? Are they all in contempt of court for showing that the government's claims were untrue, for attempting to correct the public record? I don't think so.

And that's why I post the entire story for you. Read at your peril....


=================================================
ANNEX

August 28, 2006 -- The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/europe/28plot.html

Details Emerge in British Terror Case

By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEPHEN GREYLONDON, Aug. 27 - On Aug. 9, in a small second-floor apartment in East London, two young Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their suicide plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and its "accomplices," Britain and the Jews.

"As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed," said one of the men on a "martyrdom" videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be "pleased with us and accepts our deed."

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States, barred passengers from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack.

Those details include fresh evidence from Britain's most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects' statements of their motives.But at the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately.

Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.

The suspects had been working for months out of an apartment that investigators called the "bomb factory," where the police watched as the suspects experimented with chemicals, according to British officials and others briefed on the evidence, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions.

In searches during raids, the police discovered what they said were the necessary components to make a highly volatile liquid explosive known as HMTD, jihadist materials, receipts of Western Union money transfers, seven martyrdom videos made by six suspects and the last will and testament of a would-be bomber, senior British officials said. One of the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the "war against Muslims" in Iraq and Afghanistan had motivated him to act.

Investigators say they believe that one of the leaders of the group, an unemployed man in his 20's who was living in a modest apartment on government benefits, kept the key to the alleged "bomb factory" and helped others record martyrdom videos, the officials said.Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was "mass murder on an unimaginable scale." On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as "getting really quite close to the execution stage."

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.

While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was found five days after the arrests in a suitcase buried under leaves in the woods near High Wycombe, a town 30 miles northwest of London.

Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.

In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police were still investigating the basics: "the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be attacked."

A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the suspected plot. Twelve of them have been charged. Eight people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Three people were charged with failing to disclose information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old male suspect was charged with possession of articles that could be used to prepare a terrorist act. Eight people still in custody have not been charged. Five have been released. All the suspects arrested are British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35.Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, "in theory is dangerous," but whether the suspects "had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen."While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time."In retrospect,'' said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, "there may have been too much hyperventilating going on."

Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a year ago, shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London on July 7, 2005, a coordinated attack that killed 56 people and wounded more than 700. The investigation was dubbed "Operation Overt.''

The Police Are Tipped OffThe police were apparently tipped off by informers. One former British counterterrorism official, who was working for the government at the time, said several people living in Walthamstow, a working-class neighborhood in East London, alerted the police in July 2005 about the intentions of a small group of angry young Muslim men.

Walthamstow is best known for its faded greyhound track and the borough of Waltham Forest, where more than 17,000 Pakistani immigrants live in the largest Pakistani enclave in London.

Armed with the tips, MI5, Britain's domestic security services, began an around-the-clock surveillance operation of a dozen young men living in Walthamstow - bugging their apartments, tapping their phones, monitoring their bank transactions, eavesdropping on their Internet traffic and e-mail messages, even watching where they traveled, shopped and took their laundry, according to senior British officials.

The initial focus of the investigation was not about possible terrorism aboard planes, but an effort to see whether there were any links between the dozen men and the July 7 subway bombers, or terrorist cells in Pakistan, the officials said.

The authorities quickly learned the identity of the man believed to have been the leader of the cell, the unemployed man in his mid-20's, who traveled at least twice within the past year to Pakistan, where his activities are still being investigated.

Last June, a 22-year-old Walthamstow resident, who is among the suspects arrested Aug. 10, paid $260,000 cash for a second-floor apartment in a house on Forest Road, according to official property records. The authorities noticed that six men were regularly visiting the second-floor apartment that came to be known as the "bomb factory," according to a British official and the person briefed about the case.Two of the men, who were likely the bomb-makers, were conducting a series of experiments with chemicals, said the person briefed on the case.

MI5 agents secretly installed video and audio recording equipment inside the apartment, two senior British officials said. In a secret search conducted before the Aug. 10 raids, agents had discovered that the inside of batteries had been scooped out, and that it appeared several suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports drink named Lucozade and syringes, the person with knowledge of the case said. Investigators have said they believe that the suspects intended to bring explosive chemicals aboard planes inside sports drink bottles.

In that apartment, according to a British official, one of the leaders and a man in his late 20's met at least twice to discuss the suspected plot, as MI5 agents secretly watched and listened. On Aug. 9, just hours before the police raids occurred in 50 locations from East London to Birmingham, the two men met again to discuss the suspected plot and record a martyrdom video.As one of the men read from a script before a videocamera, he recited a quotation from the Koran and ticked off his reasons for the "action that I am going to undertake," according to the person briefed on the case. The man said he was seeking revenge for the foreign policy of the United States, and "their accomplices, the U.K. and the Jews." The man said he wanted to show that the enemies of Islam would never win this "war."

Beseeching other Muslims to join jihad, he justified the killing of innocent civilians in America and other Western countries because they supported the war against Muslims through their tax dollars. They were too busy enjoying their Western lifestyles to protest the policies, he added. Though British officials usually release little information about continuing investigations, Scotland Yard took the unusual step of disclosing some detailed information about the investigation last Monday, when the suspects were charged.

A Trove of Evidence

"There have been 69 searches," Mr. Clarke, the chief antiterrorist police official from Scotland Yard, said Monday. "These have been in houses, flats and business premises, vehicles and open spaces."Investigators also seized more than 400 computers, 200 mobile phones and 8,000 items like memory sticks, CD's and DVD's. "The scale is immense," Mr. Clarke said. "Inquiries will span the globe."

He said those searches revealed a trove of evidence, and officials and others last week provided additional details.

Four of the law firms that are defending suspects declined to comment.When police officers knocked down the door to the second-floor apartment on Forest Road, they found a plastic bin filled with liquid, batteries, nearly a dozen empty drink bottles, rubber gloves, digital scales and a disposable camera that was leaking liquid, the person with knowledge of the case said. The camera might have been a prototype for a device to smuggle chemicals on the plane.

In the pocket of one of the suspects, the police found the computer memory stick that showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the United States, a British official said. The man is said to have had a diary that included a list that the police interpreted as a step-by-step plan for an attack. The items included batteries and Lucozade bottles. It also included a reminder to select a date.

In the homes of a number of the suspects, the police found jihadist literature and DVD's about "genocide" in Iraq and Palestine, according to British officials. In one house searched by the police in Walthamstow, the authorities found a copy of a book called "Defense of the Muslim Lands."A "last will and testament" for one of the accused was said to have been found at his brother's home. Dated Sept. 24, 2005, the will concludes, "What should I worry when I die a Muslim, in the manner in which I am to die, I go to my death for the sake of my maker." God, he added, can if he wants "bless limbs torn away!!!"

Looking for Global Ties

In addition, the British authorities are scouring the evidence for clues to whether there is a global dimension to the suspected plot, particularly the extent to which it was planned, financed or supported in Pakistan, and whether there is a connection to remnants of Al Qaeda.

They are still trying to determine who provided the cash for the apartment and the computer equipment and telephones, officials said.

Several of the suspects had traveled to Pakistan within weeks of the arrests, according to an American counterterrorism official.

At a minimum, investigators say at least one of the suspects' inspiration was drawn from Al Qaeda. One of the suspects' "kill-as-they-kill" martyrdom video was taken from a November 2002 fatwa by Osama bin Laden. British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a "key figure" in the plot.

In 2000, Mr. Rauf's father founded Crescent Relief London, a charity that sent money to victims of last October's earthquake in Pakistan. Several suspects met through their involvement in the charity, a friend of one of them said. Last week, Britain froze the charity's bank accounts and opened an investigation into possible "terrorist abuse of charitable funds." Leaders of the charity have denied the allegations.Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

But within hours of Mr. Rauf's arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British officials heard from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to contact some of the suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a possible signal to move forward with the plot, officials said."The plotters received a very short message to 'Go now,' " said Franco Frattini, the European Union security commissioner, who was briefed by the British home secretary, John Reid, in London. "I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists."

A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit. But, nonetheless, investigators here had to change their strategy quickly.

"The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer," said a senior British security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules. "It ended much sooner than we had hoped." From then on, the British government was driven by worst-case scenarios based on a minimum-risk strategy.

British investigators worried that word of Mr. Rauf's arrest could push the London suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they would not be able to arrest them all. But investigators also could not rule out that there could be an unknown second cell that would try to carry out a similar plan, officials said.Mr. Clarke, as the country's top antiterrorism police official in London with authority over police decisions, ordered the arrests.

But it was left to Mr. Reid, who has been home secretary since May and is a former defense secretary, to decide at emergency meetings of police, national security and transport leaders, what else needed to be done. Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke declined repeated requests for interviews.Prime Minister Tony Blair was on vacation in Barbados, where he was said to have monitored events in London; Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not attend the meeting.

"While the arrests were unfolding, the Home Office raised Britain's terror alert level to "critical," as the police continued their raids of suspects' homes and cars. All liquids were banned from carry-on bags, and some public officials in Britain and the United States said an attack appeared to be imminent. In addition to Mr. Stephenson's remark that the attack would have been "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," Mr. Reid said that attacks were "highly likely" and predicted that the loss of life would have been on an "unprecedented scale."Two weeks later, senior officials here characterized the remarks as unfortunate. As more information was analyzed and the British government decided that the attack was not imminent, Mr. Reid sought to calm the country by backing off from his dire predictions, while defending the decision to raise the alert level to its highest level as a precaution.

In lowering the threat level from critical to severe on Aug. 14, Mr. Reid acknowledged: "Threat level assessments are intelligence-led. It is not a process where scientific precision is possible. They involve judgments."

Reporting for this article was contributed by William J. Broad from New York, Carlotta Gall from Pakistan, David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

Pakistan Times : Three more Charged in UK Jetliner Bomb Plot

Three more Charged in UK Jetliner Bomb Plot

Pakistan Times' UK Bureau | August 31, 2006

LONDON (UK): British anti-terrorist police charged three more people late Tuesday with conspiring to commit murder in the alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.

The three, Mohammed Yasar Gulzar, Mohammed Shamin Uddin and Nabeel Hussain, were also charged with preparing to commit terrorism by helping in an alleged plan to smuggle explosives aboard the planes, police said.

Eleven people have now been charged on those two counts. Four others were charged with lesser offenses, including having knowledge of a terrorist activity but not disclosing information about it.

Gulzar, Shamin and Nabeel conspired with eight other suspects in the alleged plot and had intended to commit "acts of terrorism engaged in conduct to give effect to their intention to smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices onto aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board."

All three men were to be arraigned today, Wednesday.

Of 25 people originally arrested, 15 have been charged and are being held by police, five others remain in custody without charge and five have been released.

Chief Magistrate Timothy Workman earlier ordered Nabeel Hussain's brother Mehran Hussain held in custody until Sept. 19. Mehran Hussain, and his other brother, Umair, are charged with failing to tell police about Nabeel's alleged involvement in what prosecutors say was a plot to down airliners using plastic and liquid explosives.

Workman also ordered Cossar Ali, 24, held in custody until Sept. 5, when her lawyer David Gottlieb said he intends to apply for bail. Ali, the only woman charged so far in connection with the alleged plot, is accused of failing to disclose information about a possible terrorist attack.

Her husband, Ahmed Abdullah Ali, also is among the 15 people charged in the case.

Earlier, a 17-year-old accused of storing an explosives manual and other documents connected to an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners was denied bail during a court appearance.

The teenager, who cannot be identified, was remanded until a Sept. 19 hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

His attorney, Gareth Peirce, said the teenager intended to plead not guilty. He faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted, prosecutor Colin Gibbs told the court.

Gibbs told the court the teenager is accused of storing an explosives manual, a map of Afghanistan and five wills made out by people planning to commit suicide bombings, items police consider likely connected to planned acts of terrorism.

A deadline for the detention of the remaining five suspects held without charge expires on Wednesday, but a police spokesman said it was not yet decided whether they would be charged or if police would seek further time for questioning.

Investigators have found chemicals that can be used to make bombs, including hydrogen peroxide, and electrical components during their searches, said Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist department.

Months of surveillance had produced "significant video and audio recordings" about the alleged plot, he said, including "martyrdom videos" by some of the suspects.

More than 8,000 items of data storage, such as compact discs, DVDs and memory sticks, were found, authorities said.