Al-Qaeda's Hand In Istanbul Plot

Habib Aktas, black-haired and sturdy, was said to have fought in Chechnya and Bosnia, in addition to attending Afghan training camps. A native of Mardin, an ancient Turkish city where Arabic is still spoken, he became head of the group formed on the terrace of Haksan Co. He hosted study groups dedicated to memorizing the Koran and indoctrinating new members "in how beautiful Osama bin Laden's path was, making jihad," said one attendee. Aktas showed videos excoriating Israel and the United States and charged attendees $3 to attend jihadist picnics in the hills above the Black Sea.

"You don't have to go abroad to fulfill your duties," he declared at one meeting, a suspect recalled. "You can also make jihad here."

The original plan involved no bombs. Aktas's group would stage a spectacular assault on a gathering of the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association, a group known as TUSIAD that one suspect noted included "a lot of Jewish bosses."

"The idea," said Baki Yigit, one of the men who met bin Laden, "was to bust into a TUSIAD meeting with 10 or 15 people and ask for ransom for all members, to collect a million dollars, provide a plane and come back to Afghanistan. If anything went wrong, they would kill all the TUSIAD members and martyr themselves."

In Kandahar, al-Qaeda's military chief, Muhammad Atef, who was known to the Turks by his alias, Abu Hafs al-Masri, observed that 15 men would be a lot to lose in one operation. He suggested truck bombs. Aktas deferred to the expert, then hastened back to Turkey after Sept. 11, anticipating the American attack on Afghanistan that would leave Atef dead.

By May 2002, the Istanbul plot was underway. After toying with purchasing a quarry as an excuse for buying explosives, Aktas rented an industrial workshop for $850 a month in a part of Istanbul that lies on the European side of the Bosporus Strait. "Rainbow Detergent" read the sign out front. The windows were painted over.

"They were not friendly at all. They were very closed people, " said Ulku Yerlikaya, who tended a shop across the road. "They came to work at night."

Inside, Aktas set up a boiler, cooking down an acid into which he spooned hydrogen peroxide, following a recipe apparently learned in the Afghan training camps. The mixture was spread on the floor to dry, then packed into 100-pound fertilizer bags. Each was fitted with a fuse fashioned from wires and aluminum pipe by Gurcan Bac, another camp veteran, who spent hours on the Internet gathering information "from chats," one confederate told investigators.

The end product was loaded onto four covered pickup trucks purchased with cash Aktas kept in a safe-deposit box. Each truck, registered to relatives of the conspirators, carried two tons of the explosive concoction.

Cell leaders enforced a strict tradecraft. When plot participants gathered for meetings, usually late at night, they turned off cellphones, removed their batteries and unplugged radios against the possibility these devices might be used for surveillance by Turkish intelligence.

"Don't put your nose in other people's business," Fevzi Yitiz said he was told after asking about the cost of the bombs that he slept beside in the warehouse.

There were other precautions. In March 2003, after the capture in Pakistan of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, who investigators say was an architect of the Sept. 11 plot, cell leaders cut off contact with the one Turk who had remained in Pakistan as a contact point with al-Qaeda.