2006 Liquid Terror Plot - alleged bombs on UK-US planes

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

Moderators

Last night someone posted a link in this topic to a web proxy service that can be used to access pages that have the new geographic censorship applied.

This morning their post is gone.

Does anyone know why ?

[Mark Gobell]

This is what the NY Times has to say about the geographical censorship of their story about the alleged UK terror plot.

Times Withholds Web Article in Britain

By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: August 29, 2006

If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline “Details Emerge in British Terror Case,” which sat on top of The New York Times’s home page much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click.

Details Emerge in British Terror Case (August 28, 2006) “On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain,” is the message they would have seen. “This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.”

In adapting technology intended for targeted advertising to keep the article out of Britain, The Times addressed one of the concerns of news organizations publishing online: how to avoid running afoul of local publishing laws.

“I think we have to take every case on its own facts,” said George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company. “But we’re dealing with a country that, while it doesn’t have a First Amendment, it does have a free press, and it’s our position that we ought to respect that country’s laws.”

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, said restricting information fit with trends across the Internet. “There’s a been a sense that technology can create a form of geographic zoning on the Internet for many years now — that they might not be 100 percent effective, but effective enough,” Mr. Zittrain said. “And there’s even a sense that international courts might be willing to take into account these efforts.

Plans were made at The Times over the weekend to withhold print versions of the article in Britain, as well as news agency and archived versions.

But the issue of the Web was more complicated.

Richard J. Meislin, the paper’s associate managing editor for Internet publishing, said the technological hurdle was surmounted by using some of The Times’s Web advertising technology. The paper could already discern the Internet address of users connecting to the site to deliver targeted marketing, and could therefore deliver targeted editorial content as well. That took several hours of programming.

“It’s never a happy choice to deny any reader a story,” said Jill Abramson, a managing editor at The Times. “But this was preferable to not having it on the Web at all.”

===============================================

Strange then that this censorship technology was in place last night - ie: you could not access the following link from the UK without using a web proxy service.

But this morning the link is working again:

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

Could a moderator please reply to my question about why last night's post linking to a web proxy service has been completely removed from this thread ?

Thank you.

[Wokeman]

No, but I can guess!

[Mark Gobell]

Since the NY Times article which was censored to UK users last night is this morning available to read by UK users, here it is:

Details Emerge in British Terror Case

LONDON, 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 Off

The 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’s 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.

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

[Jayhawk]

I'm sure it was pointed out recently that
1 It is a bit risky to publish "how to make a bomb" articles on the internet and
2. Somebody could cause trouble by posting the same on 9/11 sites.
Have the moderators anything to say about the top article on here?

[Mark Gobell]

Reference my earlier post about the 2000 bomb plot.

The trial took place in 2002 and among the charges were "conspiracy to cause explosions between 1 October and 18 November 2000" although both men were cleared of this charge.

Moinul Abedin, known to MI5 as "Pivoting Dancer" was convicted of committing an act with intent to cause an explosion using the explosive HMTD and was jailed for 20 years.

His "accomplice" the very dangerous to know, Dr Faisal Mostafa, a chemistry Phd., known to MI5 as "Molten Lava" was, luckily, acquitted of all terrorist charges. Again.

The incredibly fortunate Dr Faisal Mostafa, coincidentally was acquitted on similar charges in 1996 but served a short sentence for posession of a pistol as a result of that trial.

After his second acquittal in a row on terrorist charges the dodgy Doctor was reported to have said "I have been a fool. You'd think I'd know better after the last time."

Well depends what you mean by a fool really Doc, I mean, with your rather obvious luck in the courts, the possibilities are endless, rather like molten lava rolling down a hillside, although dangerous to buildings and people, quite unstoppable with a volcano behind you.

As for the files that were found, on the dodgy Doctors hard drive, they amounted to a "terrorist's handbook" and included documents such as "Guerilla's Arsenal" and "Middle Eastern Terrorist Bomb Design" and "Mujahideen Explosives Handbook".

It turns out that these documents actually do exist.

GUERILLA'S ARSENAL by David Harber; a good beginners guide to explosives and detonators, techniques and applications. http://www.gunsnet.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9801

"Mujahideen Terrorist Handbook", an American publication which lists, among other things, ‘Buying explosives and propellants', ‘useful household chemicals and availability', ‘preparation of chemicals', ‘explosives recipes,' ‘ignition devices', ‘lists of suppliers' and a ‘checklist for raids on labs', prioritizing the materials to be stolen.
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369759

Hmm. An American Publication eh . . .

"Mid East Terrorist Bomb Design" only returns a couple of google hits. One can be found on a CD available here on a forum run by Voyager Systems of Beverley Hills. No not the Beverley Hills in Afghanistan, the one in Hollywood. http://www.voy.com/43891/1880.html and another result emerges from a company called Dalphon.com, a portal in Washington State. No not the one in Afghanistan the one in the USA.

So no need to visit the "secret Al Qaeeda websites" then as claimed by the "security expert" on TV all day on August 10th.

Having refused to answer police questions after he was arrested, Mr Abedin said some interesting comments at his trial in 2002.

The father-of-two claimed on Friday he had nothing to hide from police officers who raided a house he rented in Barrows Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham.

Regarding the allegation that his home which he shared with his wife and children, Abedin said "My child was running around all over the house, for God's sake,"

"These people (the prosecution) are portraying it as some major bomb factory in Barrows Road and my wife and children hanging around a bomb factory. "

"The prosecution have alleged that I was involved in some kind of conspiracy. Quite categorically, that is not the fact."

"Surely a sane person would go and destroy things - I didn't do no such action at all."

[brian]

Evidence Thin On Some U.K. Terror Suspects/Some suffering Psychologically - Lawyer

Thu. August 31, 2006
LONDON,




Evidence is thin against some of the 25 Muslims British police detained in the alleged plot to bomb U.S. aircraft, the Chicago Tribune reports.

On Aug. 10, police conducted a coordinated sweep in and around London and Birmingham, England, to break up the plot, which they said had reached a critical stage. So far, five suspects have been released, and five others have not yet been formally charged.

A London defense lawyer for a 17-year-old suspect who cannot be named told the newspaper police had misconstrued evidence when they charged her client with "possession of items that would be of use to terrorism."

Gareth Peirce criticized police for calling documents found in the youth's home "suicide notes" signed by other young Muslim men preparing to die.

"They're not suicide notes at all," Peirce said. "They're really simple wills. To call these suicide notes was absolutely disgraceful."

Police also seized a crude map of Afghanistan Peirce says was drawn years ago by the boy's younger brother.

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/breakingnews/article_21236957.shtml

[policyresearch]

[please post, email and re-post and re-email everywhere]


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


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.

[Wokeman]

If this has been kept from us because the article might prejudice someone's future trial, I cannot see how. It doesn't accuse anyone of anything. Batteries and Lucozade! As McEnroe used to say "You CANNOT be serious!

[Rory Winter]

Sources: August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police failures
Nafeez Ahmed
THE RAW STORY, Monday September 18, 2006
http://urlsnip.com/701762

British Army expert casts doubt on 'liquid explosives' threat, Al Qaeda network in UK Identified

Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit."

British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without charges.

According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.

But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a "fiction." Creating liquid explosives is a "highly dangerous and sophisticated task," he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.

Terror plot scenario "untenable"

"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German "liaison unit," then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.

"So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated.

"This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde.

If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths."

Government silent on detonators

Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft."

Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act of 1998. "Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have known, could not have worked?" asked Lt. Col. Wylde.

"This is not a new problem," he added, noting that 'shoe-bomber' Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of explosive on a plane in December 2001. "If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?" asked Wylde. "These are the real issues about protecting the public that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial."

Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained "total silence" about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. "Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet," Wylde stated.

The government's silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is "disturbing," he said, as the creation of the devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an international supply-chain to UK operatives. "In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than home-grown radicals here."

Spy slams police inaction against terrorists

Wylde's concerns are echoed by others familiar with British terrorism-related intelligence operations, such as Glen Jenvey, who is profiled in the bestselling book, The Terror Tracker, by terrorism investigator Neil Doyle. Jenvey worked for several military attaches monitoring terrorist groups in London and obtained crucial video and surveillance evidence used by British police to arrest radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was convicted last February.

"I've been closely monitoring the internet communications of extremist Muslim groups inside the UK both before and after 7/7, and they are intimately interconnected," said Jenvey, who is affiliated with the London-based terror watch group VIGIL. "We've identified a coordinated leadership of at least 20 and up to 60 people, extremist preachers with blatant international al-Qaeda terrorist connections."

Jenvey noted that even though they are known to the authorities and are monitored while breaking the law with impunity, particularly in their private sermons, the police have failed to take appropriate action against them. "The police don't need to round up and detain thousands of British Muslims. If they only arrested, charged and prosecuted these 20 key terrorist leaders, they will have a struck a fatal blow against the epicentres of al-Qaeda extremism in the UK. But they're sitting on this."

Jenvey points to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a colleague of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza who headed the now-banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun in the United Kingdom. Despite being exiled to Lebanon, Omar Bakri continues to communicate with UK-based extremist groups which are believed to be successors of al-Muhajiroun operating under new names, including the Saved Sect and al-Ghurabaa. British security sources have confirmed that the 7/7 bombers were associates of Omar Bakri's network, and Bakri himself publicly boasted a year before the London bombings that an al-Qaeda cell in London was planning a terrorist strike.

An investigation by the counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department found that Bakri's al-Muhajiroun had formed 81 front groups and support networks in six countries, most of them based in London, the home counties bordering London, the Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire. By the time Home Secretary Dr. John Reid moved in July to proscribe the latest incarnation of al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa, this sprawling interconnected network was fully functioning and continues to operate namelessly, despite proscription. Bakri's network has recently adopted the name "Al Sabiqoon Al-Awwaloon".

Jenvey complains that, despite the arrest in early September of radical cleric Abu Abdullah, convicted terrorist Abu Hamza's successor at the Finsbury Park Mosque, a "hardcore group of 20 or more extremists operating around Omar Bakri" remains at large. "The police have every reason to act, and they know who these people are. Their failure to do so has only exacerbated unjustified demonization of Muslims. These extremists are not Muslims in any meaningful sense, they are simply terrorists obsessed with violence."

MI5, MI6 recruiting extremists?

Even the arrest of Abu Abdullah only occurred after his support for terrorism was widely reported in the British and American media in late August. On 23rd August, he justified the killing of Westerners and told CNN correspondent Dan Rivers that Tony Blair is a "legitimate target" of jihad. The Sunday Times remarked that he "is apparently being allowed to operate unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offence to glorify terrorism."

Torture may have been used to extract evidence for the weekend police raids which resulted in the arrest of 14 British Muslims, including Abdullah. Sources confirm that information came from detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, where interrogation techniques classified as torture under international law are routinely used.

The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is effectively immune to prosecution.

Other London-based radical clerics with terrorist connections also had a relationship to the security services. Abu Qatada, described as al-Qaeda's European ambassador, was, according to French sources a long-time MI5 informant. Pakistani government insiders similarly believe that Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed, the British al-Qaeda finance chief from Forest Gate, not only worked with the ISI, Pakistani's military intelligence service, but was also recruited by the CIA as an informant. Saeed, who reportedly wired several hundred thousand dollars to alleged chief 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, is currently in Pakistani custody for the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

Omar Bakri regularly uses the internet to communicate from Lebanon with his followers in Britain. On Sunday evening, 3rd September, Omar Bakri told participants in an online chat forum that he had been pulled in by the Lebanese authorities at the request of the US and British governments and questioned in relation to the "terror plot". Although he denied involvement in the plot, he claimed that some of the 24 British Muslim suspects were known to him. When asked to confirm or deny whether Bakri had indeed been arrested at the request of the British, the Foreign Office had no comment. Bakri said that he was regularly questioned by Lebanese officials on behalf of the British government.

The official reluctance to act against Bakri and his active associates in the UK does not match the government's willingness to act pre-emptively to foil a plot of doubtful reality. Official reluctance to acknowledge the significance of the detonators used in the 7/7 terrorist operation suggests that the threat is far more sophisticated than authorities have admitted, and that emphasis on home-grown amateurs is mistaken. Lt. Col. Wylde's observations would seem to indicate that the terror-threat narrative is being manipulated for reasons of political expediency.

#

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Graham Ennis, Nigel Wylde and Glen Jenvey for their research assistance and contribution to this story. They bear no responsibility for any errors therein. An abridged version of this story will be printed in The Muslim News, UK on 29th September 2006.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, £9:99) and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Arris, £12:99). He testified in the US Congress about his research on international terrorism in July 2005. He teaches International Relations at the University of Sussex, Brighton.

[Dr Hemp]

Quel Surpris!

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1239382,00.html

Two brothers charged in connection with the alleged plot to bomb transatlantic passenger jets have walked free from court after a judge ruled there was "insufficient evidence" to put them on trial.

Mehran Hussain, 24, and Umair Hussain, 25, both of Chingford, east London, were discharged by District Judge Quentin Purdy following a committal hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

The brothers, who were arrested at their home on August 9, had been accused of failing to disclose information about their brother Nabeel, a suspect in the case.

[scubadiver]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6107060.stm

Two brothers charged in connection with an alleged airliner bomb plot have walked free from court.

The judge at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London ruled there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial.



No surprise to me whatsoever!!!

[Roger the Horse]

I'm hiding under my desk at the moment in foetal position contorted with fear at the thought these dangerous criminals are walking free and among us ready to spread their mad orgy of terror!
Can we not start a petition to give the police new powers to bang these people up indefinitely?

[spiv]

Ha-ha, well, what a surprise, I think not. We all seem to know on this forum just how much of a James Bond piece of fiction all this 10/08 terrorism scam by the Authorities is.

I just hope that the average UK citizen now starts to wake up, but I expect they'll be spoon fed the continued lies, and take them in as 'Gospel'.

Having been ridiculed by people I know when I tell them I think that the "mass murder of epic proportions, bigger even than 9/11" 10/08 'liquid bomb terrorist' raid is all fiction - forgive my wry grin here.

I'm seeing one of them tomorrow, oh what fun shall be had

[SHERITON HOTEL]

When do we invade Iran?

[Bowery Boy]

And all of this, in the airplane loo :

Blair’s Great Liquid Bomb Hoax.
On Aug. 10 2006, 24 “terrorist suspects” were arrested :none of them had any bombs or any plane tickets and several had no passports.
They were accused of planning to make TATP bombs onboard 10 aeroplanes.

From a PhD chemist – extract :
“TATP – triacetone triperoxide - is made from hydrogen peroxide solution, acetone and sulfuric acid. …."The peroxide and acetone can be pre-mixed, but the acid must be added, a drop at a time, to the solution, all the while continuously stirring it and keeping it continuously chilled.
This step of the process will take several hours,
during which the fumes given off will be
substantial and quite overpowering,

thus a lab-quality air evacuation system is required…….

"One then must let the resulting solution stand for an extended period at temperatures above the freezing point, but definitely below 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). Above 10 Celsius, the TATP does not form; instead, diperoxide forms, which is so unstable it cannot be worked with. The time required for the reaction to go to completion is at least
24 hours and often several days.

"Once the TATP forms, it crystallizes as snowflakes from the solution and must be harvested by filtration and the liquid discarded. The TATP then is dried and carefully stored until needed. It must be stored below 10 Celsius or it converts spontaneously to the unstable diperoxide.
This chemical process is much more sensitive
than making, for example, nitroglycerin."

This is the same, highly unstable, TATP which The Four Suicide Bombers managed to carry, including backpacking,
from Leeds to London without it exploding.

[spiv]

Ohhh Bowery Boy, you've stumbled on the slight problem which the prosecution has, what are we all to do with you?

Yup, we've remarked about this problem before at

http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=3588&highlight=

and also at

http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=3446

Bit of a b*gger really for the police and our politicians, including Reid who has pontificated about this ad naseum in front of the television cameras so the sheeple can lap up all the disinformation and lies.

Have just watched the ITV news, and just one line mentioned of this in what amounted to no more than a couple of seconds of news report. Indeed, most of the sheeple wouldn't even have known it was all to do with the 10/08 liquid bomb "terrorists"!!!

[Newspeak International]

Would we be surprised if this was front page news in all the papers, say tomorrow morning?

Good news for all of us that said to people "It's all fake terror plot BS"

That's another 2 down,how many more were charged again?
(I lost count )

[scubadiver]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6175427.stm

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.

[spiv]

Is this the start of the fictitious plot unravelling?? You know the one, Reid was bouncing all over the shop in August, trying to scare us all regarding further terrorism, the Deputy Commissioner of the Anti-terrorist Branch descibed it as 'mass murder of epic proportions', the baby milk bombers, the very reason why we are all so inconvenienced with the prohibitions of carrying liquids onto planes etc etc.

Of course, we all know that this scaremongering by the Authorities is a myth to get us to willingly give up our rights and freedoms, to become submissive little souls for our masters, we've debated it several times on this forum.

And it seems (unsurprisingly) that our beliefs are being proved right yet again.

I got whiff of this from Reuters
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid= 2006-12-13T114335Z_01_ISL50848_RTRUKOC_0_UK-PAKISTAN-PLOT-COURT.xml&sr c=rss

Time methinks that our politicians and intelligence services came clean with the truth now, and refrained from trying to frighten us by lying!!!

[PaulStott]

[Mark Gobell]

Caution the better part of ... erm ... oh never mind.

Just google Rashid Rauf and contrast what the Pak authorities and the rest of the MSM were saying back in August, then compare those "products" of our wonderfully independent "checked and balanced" media with the latest story.

From "an Al Q main player" planning mass murder on an unimaginable scale to "insufficient evidence" in a mere 18 weeks.

Well someone, somewhere imagined it didn't they ?

[spiv]

Absolutely fascinating, see how the UK mainstream media are slanting this...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2502085,00.html

Says it all, doesn't it!!! Clearly these rogues we have in UK Government and Intelligence circles will stop at nothing to continue their 'illusion'!!

[Leiff]

The War on Shampoo
"More propaganda than plot". Liquid bomb scare was a Home Office sponsored hoax

by Craig Murray

Global Research, December 18, 2006


Google "Rashid Rauf - mastermind". On the first page of results you will find CBS, the BBC, the Times, Guardian and Mail all describing Rauf last summer, on security service or police briefing, as the "Mastermind" behind the "Liquid terror bomb plot". So the fact that a Pakistani court has found there is no evidence of terrorism against him cannot be lightly dismissed by the cheerleaders of the plot story.

Rashid Rauf still faces other charges, including forgery, and what is touted as possession of explosives, although what he actually possessed was hydrogen peroxide, which is not explosive. As hydrogen peroxide is readily obtainable without limitation from any chemist or hardware store in the UK, why you would source it in Pakistan to blow up jets in Britain was never very convincing. The Pakistani court perhaps felt so too.

Rashid Rauf has much to answer. He is still wanted in the UK over the murder of his uncle some years ago - a crime which, like the alleged forgery, had no apparent terrorist link. None of which adds to the credibility of the evidence he allegedly gave the Pakistani intelligence services about the liquid bomb plot in the UK.

A second and simultaneous development is even more compelling evidence that this massive scare was, as I said at the time, "More propaganda than plot". Thames Valley police have given up after five months scouring the woods near High Wycombe where the bomb materials were allegedly hidden. They told the Home Office on 12 December that they would only continue if the government were prepared to meet the costs; they wished to get back to devoting their resources to real crimes, like armed robbery and burglary.

Remember this was a plot described by the authorities as "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale" and "Bigger than 9/11". There have been instances in the UK of hundreds of police officers deployed for years to find an individual murderer. If the police really believed they were dealing with an effort at "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale", would they be calling off the search after five months? No.

Which brings us to the lies that have been told - one of which concerns this search. An anonymous police source tipped off the media early on that they had discovered a "Suitcase" containing "bomb-making materials". This has recently been described to me by a security service source as "A lot of rubbish from someone's garage dumped in the woods". You could indeed cannibalise bits of old wire, clocks and car parts to form part of a bomb - perhaps you could enclose it in the old suitcase. But have they found stuff that is exclusively concerned with causing explosions, like detonators, explosives or those famous liquid chemicals? No, they haven't found any.

Wycombe Woods, like the sands of Iraq, have failed to yield up the advertised WMD.

The other "evidence" that the police announced they had found consisted of wills (with the implication they were made by suicide bombers) and a map of Afghanistan. It turns out that the wills were made in the early 90s by volunteers going off to fight the Serbs in Bosnia - they had been left with the now deceased uncle of one of those arrested. The map of Afghanistan had been copied out by an eleven year old boy. All of which is well known to the UK media, but none of which has been reported for fear of prejudicing the trial. I am at a complete loss to understand why it does not prejudice the trial for police to announce in a blaze of worldwide front page publicity that they have found bomb-making materials, wills and maps. Only if you contradict the police is that prejudicial. Can anyone explain why?

While the arrest of 26 people in connection with the plot was also massively publicised, the gradual release of many of them has again gone virtually unreported. For example on 31 October a judge released two brothers from Chingford commenting that the police had produced no credible evidence against them. Charges against others have been downgraded, so that those now accused of plotting to commit explosions are less than the ten planes the police claimed they planned to blow up in suicide attacks.

Five British newspapers had to pay damages to a Birmingham man they accused, on security service briefing, of being part of the plot. Only the Guardian had the grace to publish the fact and print a retraction.

A final fact to ponder. Despite naming him as the "mastermind" behind somethng "bigger than 9/11", the British government made no attempt to extradite Rashid Rauf on charges of terrorism. That is not difficult to do - the Pakistani authorities have handed over scores of terrorist suspects to the US, many into the extraordinary rendition process, and on average the procedure is astonishingly quick - less than a week and they are out of the country. But the British security services, who placed so much weight on intelligence from Rashid Rauf, were extraordinarily coy about getting him here where his evidence could be properly scrutinised by a British court. However MI5 were greatly embarassed by Birmingham police, who insisted on pointing out that Rauf was wanted in the UK over the alleged murder of his uncle in Birmingham. Now he was in custody in Pakistan, shouldn't we extradite him? So eventually an extradition request over that murder was formally submitted - but not pursued with real energy or effort. There remains no sign that we will see Rauf in the UK.

I still do not rule out that there was a germ of a terror plot at the heart of this investigation. We can speculate about agents provocateurs and security service penetration, both British and Pakistani, but still there might have been genuine terrorists involved. But the incredible disruption to the travelling public, the War on Shampoo, and the "Bigger than 9/11" hype is unravelling.

You won't read that in the newspapers.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MUR200 61218&articleId=4190

[Mark Gobell]

Remember the Peter Power designated "binary liquid" event on 10.8.2006

Well, apparently one of the chaps arrested and "media accused" was a chap called Amjad Sarwar.

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=15937

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/amjad_sarwar.htm

[Mark Gobell]

From event, hearsay, arrest, media offence, instruction, judicial scheduling, trial and outcome in 111 days !

For a libel case, this is amazing.

It is the judicial carpet sweeper, at work before your very closed eyes.

[Bushwacker]

Why are people assuming that there was a trial?
Since the newspapers had no possible defence and there is no report of a trial, it seems most unlikely that there was one. What is likely to have happened is that his solicitors issued a writ and the newspapers caved in immediately, printed apologies, a sum of damages was agreed, and all the court did was rubberstamp the deal.

Why did the newspapers get it so wrong? Well, it seems from The Independant that there is a simple explanation: "While Mr Sarwar's brother Assad was arrested, we accept that Mr Sarwar was not."

[Mark Gobell]

CNN Reporting that another arrest was made in Waltham Forest in connection to the liquid bomb fiasco from 10th August 2006.

Can't find much about this in our own media apart from this from This is Local London which says the arrest was made at 6am on Tuesday 27th Feb 2007.

Anyone else hear about this ?

[Mark Gobell]

I can't understand the media silence on this arrest.

I thought it might be an aide memoire for the jurors on the 21.7 trial as the arrest was made on 27.2.2007, exactly 1 week and 19 months after 21.7.5

27.2.2007 could be interpreted as a 911 or 119 motif.

The arrest of another Bojinka 2006 suspect, might be connected to the conviction of the alleged Bojinka 1995 mastermind Ramzi Yousef who was sentenced to life on 8.1.98 exactly 9 years, 1 month and 19 days before (9119) or, alternatively 109 months and 19 days (1919)

Incidentally, 9/11 happened 10 days and 8 months into the year. Bojinka 2006 was on 10.8