Al-Qaida operative arrives in court

AP ^ | 11/6/06 | DAVID STRINGER

[Valin]

LONDON - One of the top al-Qaida operatives known to have been captured in Britain appeared in court amid heavy security Monday for sentencing in a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange , the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington and to use a dirty bomb in London.

Flanked by two guards, Barot sat expressionless behind a glass wall as the proceedings began. Born in India but raised in Britain, he pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to commit mass murder in terrorist plots on both sides of the Atlantic. He faces a life sentence.

Prosecutors say Barot had planned to cram three limousines with gas cylinders and explosives and detonate them in underground London parking garages and had also identified several London hotels and railway stations as potential targets. Other attacks in Britain included using a dirty bomb and blowing up a petrol tanker, according to Lawson.

"If a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself, this would cause pandemonium ... explosions, flooding, drowning," Barot wrote in the computer documents found, according to Lawson.

After leaving his job as an airline ticket clerk in Britain, he went to Pakistan and attended a terrorist training camp in the Pakistan-controlled area of Kashmir for at least four months, Lawson said.

In August 2000 and March 2001, Barot went on two reconnaissance trips to the United States, Lawson said.

Discovery of his purported plot against U.S. targets that included the World Bank headquarters in Washington, Citigroup headquarters in New York and the Prudential building in Newark, N.J., led President Bush to raise the U.S. terrorism threat level.

In papers written under the alias, Eisa al-Hindi, Barot called for attacks against the West and said "the most favorable target would be the national economy of the Western bloc." He also claimed that he trained fighters in Afghanistan , although details of that trip were unclear.

British authorities captured him in a London barber shop on Aug. 3, 2004.

The shaky camcorder film, which Lawson said was shot in 2001, showed buildings on Broad Street and Wall Street. It also contained details of entrances and security barriers at the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup headquarters.

Lawson played the footage in court, freezing the video that showed a man identified as Barot walking into view on Wall Street.

Barot is wanted in the United States on a four-count indictment and faces a life sentence if convicted of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Under British law, domestic proceedings take precedence over an extradition. He is also wanted in Yemen for the 1988 kidnappings of Westerners.

Friends said he had aspired to be a hotel manager. He is also known Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani.

That last name figured in the report of the U.S. commission into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which claimed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 planner, ordered al-Britani to identify bombing targets in New York and sent him to Malaysia to study Islamic extremists there.

The Associated Press, The British Broadcasting Corp., and Times Newspapers Ltd. successfully challenged a court ruling that threatened to prevent the reporting of details of sentencing and details from the hearing. Judge Neil Butterfield had ruled that publishing details of the sentencing hearing could prejudice trials of Barot‘s seven co-defendants.

The alleged coconspirators are scheduled to face trial in Britain next year.

[navyblue]

Git a rope!

[Albertafriend]

"Discovery of his purported plot against U.S. targets that included the World Bank headquarters in Washington, Citigroup headquarters in New York and the Prudential building in Newark, N.J., led President Bush to raise the U.S. terrorism threat level."

Remember when this happened in New York and Washington in August 04 and the DUmmies howled about the "timing" since it was in between the Dem and the Republican conventions? Now we know "the rest of the story".

[Valin]

Oh they're always howling about something or other. And of course it's always George Bushs fault.