Posted on 04/03/2008 9:45:09 AM PDT by Alouette
A GROUP of Islamist terrorists plotted to blow up several passenger planes with liquid explosives, a court heard today.
A gang of eight men accused of planning to blow up transatlantic aircraft whilst in mid-air wanted to inflict “heavy casualties”, it was alleged at Woolwich Crown Court today.
Prosecutor Peter Wright said the victims of the terror attacks would have been an “unwitting civilian population” and that the men planned to inflict the casualties all in the name of Islam with a series of coordinated explosions.
Woolwich Crown Court heard how homemade devices would have been smuggled on to aircraft and detonated in flight by a suicide bomber, had the alleged plot not been foiled by counter terrorist police in August 2006.
All eight men - Mohammed Gulzar, Umar Islam, Ibrahim Savant, Waheed Zaman, Assad Sarwar, Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Arafat Khan, and Tanvir Hussain - deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to carry out an explosion on board an aircraft.
Mr Wright told the jury the defendants were “almost ready to put their plot into practice” at the time of their arrests.
“The disaster they contemplated was not long off,” he said.
The men and others were prepared to board the aircraft carrying their “deadly cargo” and detonate it in flight, he said.
Mr Wright said Abdulla Ahmed Ali from Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar were the main men behind the murderous plot.
“They intended to construct and detonate a device that would bring about not only the loss of their own lives but also all those that happened to be taking, by chance, the same journey.
“Unfortunately for these men, but to the considerable good fortune of those that were their intended targets of those devices their activities had come to the attention of the police,” he said.
Mr Wright told the court police had watched several members of the gang for many months.
He said: “From what had been observed in the days and months prior to the arrests it was realised that these men, together with others, were engaged in some sort of terrorist plot.”
The court heard how Ali and Gulzar were watched by police as they met frequently at a flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, to make final preparations.
Police recovered a computer memory stick belonging to Ali which contained detailed information about flights and airport security, the jury was told.
“The memory stick contained details in respect of flight timetables, baggage information, security advice in respect of restricted items and other information about Heathrow airport,” said Mr Wright.
The jury was shown files on the memory stick giving details of flights from Heathrow to cities in North America including Boston, Denver, Chicago, Miami, New York and Montreal.
The information included the airline, terminal at Heathrow, departure times, arrival times, flight numbers, aircraft type and number of stops, the court heard.
The information on the memory stick focused only on one-way flights from Heathrow. These were all commercial airliners with passenger capacities of almost 300 people per plane.
“Collectively the flights were each of them non-stop transatlantic journeys to north American destinations,” said Mr Wright.
Of the flights on the memory stick, seven had been highlighted, the jury was told. They were on three airlines - Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
< /sarc >
Put womens panties on their heads and feed them pork before you shoot them!
Reminds me of that guy out in the Northwest who poisoned his wife with a tampered bottle of something he bought in the supermarket, with the result that the entire country now pays billions to have every tube of toothpaste or bottle of pills equipped with tamper-proof seals. And it turned out that the poison wasn’t even inserted in the store.
President: "Can there be peace between our peoples?"
Alien: "No peace."
President: "What do you want us to do?"
Alien: "Die."
Exactly..
A look inside Al Qaeda - The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, .....his path reveals...
He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound planes in 2006, and an aborted plot in this serene Scandinavian capital last fall.
;)
Heh...
Thanks for the post.
Alouette. You must be wrong. This is the Religion Of Peace
/need I add a sarc tag
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