Prosecutor Cites Personal Diaries Outlining Plan
A British court heard detailed testimony Thursday regarding how
a group of Muslim terrorists allegedly planned to carry out as many
as seven organized attacks on airliners heading to North
America.
According to The Daily Mail, the group's plan might have
involved as many as 18 suicide bombers, working "in the name of
Islam," targeting airliners flying from London's Heathrow Airport
to the US and Canada. The group planned to smuggle liquid
explosives onto the planes, carried in plastic soda bottles.
The Woolwich Crown Court also heard details of how the
extremists planned to 'hide' their intent, by carrying pornographic
magazines and condoms in the luggage, to convince security
screeners they couldn't be devout Muslims, according to prosecutor
Peter Wright.
"These men were actively engaged in a deadly plan designed to
bring about what would have been, had they been successful, a
civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost
unprecedented scale," he told the court. "If each of these aircraft
was successfully blown up the potential for loss of life was indeed
considerable.
"And there would be little if any chance of saving any of them
from their impending disaster," he added. "For when the mid-flight
explosions began the authorities would be unable to prevent the
other flights from meeting a similar fate as they would already be
in mid air and carrying their deadly cargo."
As ANN reported, police in
London thwarted the purported attack, when on August 9, 2006 they
arrested two key members of the group, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad
Sarwar, following several months of surveillance. In the following
days, several more members of the terror cabal were detained, as
aviation authorities in the US and London hurriedly enacted an
outright ban on liquids transported in carry-on luggage.
That ban has since been eased, though restrictions remain on the
amount of liquid allowed to be carried past security.
Ali, Sarwar, and six others are on
trial this week in London. According to Wright, the two men were
"almost ready to put their plot into practice," and "shared a
common interest" in causing as much carnage as possible.
"It was an interest in which they were actively engaged at the
time of their arrest, an interest that involved inflicting heavy
casualties upon an unwitting civilian population, all in the name
of Islam," Wright told the court. "The means by which they intended
to inflict heavy casualties upon ordinary civilians was by the
carrying out of a series of coordinated and deadly explosions.
"These men were, we say, indifferent to the carnage that was
likely to ensue if their plans were successful. To them, the
identities of their victims was a complete irrelevance. It is the
prosecution case that they intended to cause a series of explosions
on board a selected number of transatlantic passenger
aircraft."
Police also found several items tying the men to the plot,
including syringes, materials to make homemade explosives and
detonators, and personal diaries outlining the steps leading up to
the attacks.
"The devices were to be smuggled on to the aircraft and
detonated in flight by a suicide bomber, a bomber prepared to lose
his or her life in this way," Wright said. "Inevitably, such an
event would also have fatal consequences for the various passengers
and crew who happened, quite by chance, to be flying to North
America on the day selected by them to commit this atrocity."
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.16.24)
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