Seven Britons Stand Trial in Bombing Plot
An artist's impression of defendants, from left: Omar Khyam, Anthony Garcia, Nabel Hussain, Jawad Akbar, Waheed Mahmood, Shujah Mahmood and Salahuddin Amin. They have pleaded not guilty to charges that they planned bombings of various targets in Britain.
(By Elizabeth Cook -- Press Association Via Associated Press)
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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
LONDON, March 21 -- Seven British men who went on trial here Tuesday were considering bombing nightclubs, trains or the country's power network and were in the final stages of the al-Qaeda-linked plot when they were arrested, a prosecutor said.
Members of the group had previously flown to Pakistan for instruction at terrorist training camps and received backing from a senior al-Qaeda operative, prosecutor David Waters said at the start of their trial.
The defendants, who have pleaded not guilty to charges that they planned bombings in Britain, were caught in raids in and around London in March 2004. Police said they seized 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer used for homemade bombs, about a third of the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Mohammed Junaid Babar, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in federal court in New York in 2004, assisted the men at camps in Pakistan, Waters said. Babar does not face charges in Britain and is expected to testify Wednesday on behalf of the prosecution.
Waters said that in June 2003, one of the seven accused -- 24-year-old Omar Khyam -- met Babar in Pakistan and told him that Britain was "unscathed and needed to be hit because of its support for the U.S." Pubs, nightclubs or trains were potential targets, the prosecutor said.
Meanwhile, a judge in Madrid indicted 32 men, most of them Algerians, in connection with an alleged 2004 plot to detonate a massive truck bomb at Madrid's National Court, the hub of Spain's anti-terrorism investigations.
All but three of the suspects are already in jail, including Abderrahmane Tahiri, alias Mohamed Achraf, the alleged chief organizer, who was extradited from Switzerland last April. He allegedly intended to be one of multiple suicide attackers.
The group hoped to kill judges, clerks and members of the public and destroy files concerning the "mujaheddin brotherhood" that were stored inside, the indictment said. Other possible targets for the group included the stadium of the Real Madrid soccer team and a political party's headquarters, according to investigations by another Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon.
The alleged plot was uncovered in October 2004 with the help of an unnamed informant. The indictment said Tahiri hoped to finance the plot from Switzerland.
The indictment also said Tahiri ordered one suspect, Kamara Birahima Diadie, from Mauritania, to acquire explosives from an arms trafficker in the Spanish province of Almeria and establish contacts with a Palestinian who would prepare the detonator. Garzon alleged that Tahiri, a Moroccan, set up a cell known as the "Martyrs for Morocco" while serving time in a Spanish prison for credit card fraud.
