Militant Islam Monitor > Weblog > Lawyer for 8 terror suspects planning radioactive attacks in US &UK claims jailed clients were "not allowed to read the Koran "
Lawyer for 8 terror suspects planning radioactive attacks in US &UK claims jailed clients were "not allowed to read the Koran "
August 17, 2004
MIM: More terrorism arrests in the UK and yet Islamists groups continue to gather with impunity .
These new charges involve a dirty bomb and chemical attacks and are consistent with the ideology espoused by Al Muhajiroun and Hizb ut Tahrir .
The British government policy of hoping the terrorists they so graciously accomodate wont 'bite the hand that feeds them' does not take into account that this 'conventional wisdom' is not applicable when those being fed are rabid .
It is time to institute war tribunals in dealing with terrorism so that the charges such as attempted mass murder by a dirty bomb wont be described by UK law enforcement as " a public nuisance" and lawyers will not be able to file s frivolous complaints about how their clients may have been "slapped on the face during their arrest" or "forbidden to read the Koran " while in detention.
It was alleged that they had "conspired together and with other persons unknown to commit public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives," the Metropolitan Police said.
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Eight to Face Court on Terror Murder Plot Charges.
By Nick Allen, Crime Correspondent, and Caroline Gammell, PA News
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3360862
After being quizzed for two weeks at high security Paddington Green police station in London the group were jointly charged with conspiracy to murder.
They were also charged with planning to use radioactive materials, chemicals, toxic gases or conventional explosives in an attack.
Their arrests followed intelligence from Pakistan and sparked fears of an attack at Heathrow, although the airport was not specifically mentioned in the charges.
Sources said one of the suspects Dhiren Barot, 32, from Willesden, north west London, used the alias Abu Eisa al-Hindi.
He was charged under the Terrorism Act with having reconnaissance plans " which could have been used as a blueprint for an attack on financial institutions in the United States.
The plans are alleged to have been for the New York Stock Exchange, Citigroup in New York and the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C.
The buildings were among a string of US financial institutions placed on security alert on August 1, two days before Barot and the others were arrested in Britain in raids by the Anti-Terrorist Branch and MI5.
Barot is also alleged to have been in possession of two notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons and chemicals.
He and Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, also from Willesden, were also charged jointly under the Terrorism Act with having reconnaissance plans of the Prudential Building in New Jersey.
Another man, Quaisar Shaffi, 25, also of Willesden, was charged under the Terrorism Act over possession of an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook", a bomb-making guide available on the Internet.
The extract was alleged to contain instructions on preparing chemicals and explosives.
Barot, Tarmohammed and Shaffi were jointly charged with plotting to murder and use explosive or toxic devices with five other men.
They were Omar Abdul Rehman, 20, of Bushey, Hertfordshire; Zia Ul Haq, 25, of Paddington, London; Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31, of Luton, Bedfordshire; Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24, of Harrow, Middlesex; and Junade Feroze, of Blackburn, Lancashire.
All will appear before a district judge tomorrow at Belmarsh magistrates court, next to the high security Belmarsh jail in south-east London.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft said prosecutors there were exploring whether there would be any charges across the Atlantic.
A ninth man, Matthew Philip Monks, 32, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon.
Police had earlier ceased to investigate four others for terrorism offences.
Mudassar Arani, solicitor for seven of the men, claimed they had been psychologically abused through being held in solitary confinement during two weeks of questioning and, in some cases, stopped from reading the Koran.
She also claimed that one of her clients had been hit in the face by police when he was arrested.
Under current rules enshrined in the Terrorism Act suspects can be held for a maximum of two weeks from the time of arrest and the men were charged as time ran out.
Home Secretary David Blunkett said he was being kept fully informed of the case.
He said: "I have been kept regularly updated throughout the investigations. We must now let the judicial process take its course."
Latest News:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm
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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/print/101496/1/.html
LONDON : Britain laid charges against eight terror suspects, including conspiracy to murder and possession of surveillance plans of the New York Stock Exchange and other US-based financial institutions.
The men, detained in police raids in London and other parts of England two weeks ago, were also charged with plotting to use deadly weapons possibly including radioactive materials and explosives, police said in a statement.
It was alleged that they had "conspired together and with other persons unknown to commit public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives," the Metropolitan Police said.
The men's arrest on August 3 followed a major crackdown of alleged Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and a heightened state of terrorist alert in the United States.
Two of the suspects were charged with possessing what police called "reconnaissance plans" and documents relating to the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, and the head offices of the banking giant Citigroup in New York City and the insurance and financial services provider Prudential in Newark, New Jersey.
US officials cranked up security in early August around those financial institutions after the Pakistani operation uncovered computer files containing detailed surveillance plans of the buildings.
None of the eight charged Tuesday was named as Abu Issa al-Hindi, said by US officials to have been "intimately involved" in producing and perhaps writing reconnaissance reports found on seized computer disks in Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence officials had told AFP earlier this month that one of the men being held after the arrests in Britain was al-Hindi.
Home Secretary David Blunkett said Tuesday he had been "kept regularly updated throughout the investigations" into the eight men, who are to appear before a magistrate in London on Wednesday.
"We must now let the judicial process take its course," he said.
The men, aged 20 to 32, were named by the Metropolitan Police as Dhiren Barot, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, Abdul Aziz Jalil, Omar Abdul Rehman, Junade Feroze, Zia Ul Haq, Qaisar Shaffi and Nadeem Tarmohammed.
Barot, 32, and Tarmohammed, 26, allegedly had plans for the Prudential Building which could have been used to plot a terror strike, while Barot alone was charged with possessing further detailed plans for the New York stock exchange, the IMF and Citigroup, the police said.
Barot was also charged with having two notebooks filled with information about explosives, poisons and chemicals, as well as information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".
Police also charged Shaffi, 25, with possessing an extract from "The Terrorist's Handbook", an anonymously written manual which is easily available on the Internet explaining how to prepare chemicals and explosives.
A ninth man, described as Matthew Philip Monks, 32, was charged with possession of an illegal weapon. The police said they were unsure when and where he would appear in court.
Washington came under a hail of criticism after it switched to level "orange", its second-highest security alert level, on August 1, with many observers arguing the move was based on old information and motivated by political campaign interests.
US national security chief Tom Ridge said last week that even though the intelligence was three years old, he had reacted to "shocking new detail" of Al-Qaeda reconnaissance of the US financial buildings scooped by Pakistan.
A computer containing the files -- which Ridge said were up to 40 pages long and contained details about security guard outfits and potential escape routes for attackers -- was seized during the July 25 arrest of a Tanzanian indicted over his alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in east Africa.
The British charge sheet did not specify when the eight suspects conspired to attack. It said only the acts had taken place on "diverse days" between January 1, 2000 and August 2004.
Barot, Tarmohammed and Shaffi, likewise, were charged with possessing incriminating documents only "on a day or days" between February 19, 2001 and their arrest.
It was unclear whether documents described in the British charges matched those retrieved in the Pakistani raid.
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