Terrorist Tube (Subway) Gas Plot Foiled (UK)

Independent (UK) ^ | 11-17-2002 | Jo Dillon/Andrew Clennell/Raymond Whitaker

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Terrorist Tube gas plot foiled

By Jo Dillon, Andrew Clennell, and Raymond Whitaker
17 November 2002

Three men have been charged over an alleged plot to carry out a terrorist attack on the London Underground as fears over a direct threat to Britain's security mounted.

Though Scotland Yard confirmed that three men had appeared before Bow Street magistrates, they were not charged with plotting a specific outrage. But reports today claimed that the men had been planning to bring the ingredients for a gas bomb into Britain, most probably to release cyanide into the Tube network.

No chemical or bomb-making equipment was discovered, but the men are being held under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for the possession of articles for the preparation, instigation and commission of terrorist acts and are due to appear before magistrates again tomorrow.

The threat to the Underground has also been revealed within days of the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden. In a tape broadcast by the al-Jazeera satellite network, which the US authorities have accepted as almost certainly authentic, the al-Qa'ida leader specifically threatened Britain and five other Western allies of the US. The three suspects are believed to be connected to an Algerian terror network that has close links with al-Qa'ida.

It is understood that six people were originally arrested but only three – Rabah Chekat-Bais, 21, Rabah Kadris, in his mid-30s, and Karim Kadouri, 33, were charged. All three appeared in court on Tuesday, are unemployed and of no fixed address.

According to The Sunday Times, the three north African men were suspected of being al-Qa'ida terrorists whose most likely target was a crowded London commuter train. The Government has rejected suggestions that the arrests on 9 November had prompted Tony Blair's terror warning at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in the City last Monday or a Home Office warning, later withdrawn, that terrorists might resort to using "a so-called dirty bomb or poison gas". MI5 is reported to have been tracking the alleged conspiracy for several weeks, and the Prime Minister must have been aware of the details.

Home Office sources, responding to concerns that the public had not been made aware of any potential threat, said the Government was receiving daily intelligence and that if the Government or the police felt there was a threat, they would have warned people. Last Monday Mr Blair said barely a day went by without new intelligence about a threat to British interests.

A Government source said last night: "The Government will take whatever measures necessary to combat the threat of potential terrorism."(BRAVO!)

MI5, the security service, is reported to have been monitoring the group for several months but Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch was urged to make the arrests before detailed inquiries into their alleged links with al-Qa'ida could be made.

The devastating potential effect of a gas attack on an underground transport system was demonstrated in Tokyo in 1995, when the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin nerve gas, killing 12 and injuring 5,000. Members of the cult planted small perforated bags of sarin, designed so that the gas would seep out and spread slowly in the confined spaces of Tokyo's subway during the rush hour.

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Attack on Underground foiled as MI5 move in to thwart terrorists

The threat to Britain from Islamist terrorists has been terrifyingly spelled out with the charging of three men last week suspected of plotting a poison gas attack on the London Underground.

Raymond Whitaker, Paul Lashmar and Andrew Buncombe follow the trail of intelligence work going on behind the scenes
17 November 2002

The dramatic arrest of six north Africans last week on suspicion of carrying out a terrorist attack in London has all the hallmarks of a major operation by British security services, who are believed to have learnt of threats to Britain after interrogating al-Qa'ida suspects detained in Belmarsh high-security prison.

Officers at Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch were understood to have raided several addresses in north London, taking away items during searches. Three of the men were later released and no chemicals or bomb equipment were found. But the other three appeared in court last week charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, amid fears that they were plotting a cyanide attack on the London Underground. The three have been remanded in custody.

Today's Sunday Times also claims that MI5 had intelligence that a gang was planning to bring ingredients for a gas bomb into Britain. The report also suggested that the alleged attack had prompted the Prime Minister to make his speech last Monday about the possible threats of terrorist attacks in Britain, and also the hasty withdrawal of the Home Office warning.

Meanwhile an investigation by The Independent on Sunday has established that security agencies have been urgently seeking to detect coded orders for a major attack on the UK. They are using every available intelligence resource, including interrogation of detained al-Qa'ida suspects and electronic intercepts.

In recent days Mr Blair, his Home Secretary, David Blunkett, the FBI and European agencies have talked of an increased level of clandestine "chatter", as well as more specific intelligence indicating that a terrorist operation might be imminent. A number of dangers have been spelled out, including the possibility that a "dirty bomb" ­ nuclear material wrapped around conventional explosives ­ might be placed on a ferry using a British port. Geiger counters have been deployed at terminals and workers briefed on security, even at such relatively minor harbours as Falmouth in Cornwall.

Tension has been increased by the broadcast of a tape which mentions recent attacks, including the Bali bombings, and singles out Britain and five other Western countries as targets because of their support for America. According to the US administration, the voice on the tape is almost certainly that of Osama bin Laden. If so, it demonstrates not only that the al-Qa'ida mastermind is alive, but also that his network is regrouping and possibly seeking to stage another attack on the scale of 11 September 2001.

As speculation immediately resumed about Mr bin Laden's whereabouts ­ Pakistan or Afghanistan are the most likely, though some sources claimed he might be in Saudi Arabia ­ the US leaked news late last week that a unnamed but senior al-Qa'ida leader had been captured "in the past few weeks". Whether this is connected to the increase in warnings is not clear; in some quarters the leak is seen as an attempt to counter the impact of Mr bin Laden's re-emergence.

But the consensus among intelligence experts is that al-Qa'ida wants to strike somewhere in Europe, possibly in Britain. "There is new intelligence indicating another operation about to take place," Vince Cannistraro, a former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism division, told The Independent on Sunday. "Clearly there is an expectation that the next operation will be in Europe ­ it is easier. To do a spectacular event takes a long time. It took two years to do September 11. In the EU it is easier to move around."

Previous talk of an increase in terrorist communications had come to nothing, Mr Cannistraro conceded. "But they also had this spike in the intelligence chatter right before 9/11, so people are taking it seriously. On top of that, you have the new Bin Laden tape in which he names certain countries. People remember the previous audio tapes, which were followed after a period of time by more terror strikes."

Without operational codes, however, it is impossible to avert an attack. "I have seen a manual of code words, captured in Afghanistan, which looked like lists of groceries ­ basically a lot of vegetables," said one source. "When the leader of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, wanted to communicate with a colleague in Hamburg, he went to an internet chatroom and posed as a lovelorn German in the US conversing with his girlfriend back home."

Much of the interrogation of detainees, at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere, including Belmarsh prison in south-east London, has focused on detecting such codes and their meaning, according to the same source. "They would be asked what they heard at the camps in Afghanistan, and taken through the material captured there. The bin Laden tape would have been tested on some of them, to see whether it contained coded orders."

Mr Cannistraro called the detainees in Camp X-Ray "a decreasing resource, because most of the prisoners have been there for some time and don't know anything [new]". This suggests that the latest warnings stem from interrogations on this side of the Atlantic, a view supported by another former intelligence officer, who said: "I don't think there is any doubt that MI6 and other intelligence agencies have picked up a very serious warning of an attack. This most likely comes from one or more of the recent detainees in Europe.

"One of those might even include Abu Qatada [the British-based cleric known as Mr bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe"], who has been in Belmarsh since he was found in hiding in a flat near the Elephant and Castle."

Coupled with intercepted e-mails, computer traffic and phone calls, interrogations are believed to have yielded a large amount of information about potential targets, including the threat to ferries: hence the recent spate of warnings. But "real-time intelligence", which could pinpoint the time and location of an attack, remains elusive.

Dr Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism at St Andrews University, said intelligence agencies were engaged in "a massive collation exercise". In Washington this results in a daily "threat matrix", a top-secret CIA-produced document delivered every morning to the senior national security and intelligence officials of the Bush administration. It is distilled from the scores of warnings of terrorist action ­ some general, some extremely specific ­ received by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as well as those of its allies.

Similar documents are produced in London and other Western capitals, but Dr Ranstorp added: "I was told by a senior official who prepares a daily intelligence briefing in another Nato country that there was so much information, he found it impossible to go through all of it."

Ten days ago a dramatic statement from Mr Blunkett was issued and hastily withdrawn. It speculated about parcel or vehicle bombs, aircraft hijackings or "something different", such as a dirty bomb or poison gas. Or the theatre siege in Moscow. Or seizing boats or trains rather than planes. Almost certainly a straight transcript from the latest "threat matrix", it led some in Whitehall to complain that Britain was following the same path as the US, where the FBI issued so many warnings around the 11 September anniversary that they became worthless. While the Prime Minister's warning a few days later was equally grave, it avoided going into the same detail.

On Friday, however, the FBI was at it again, warning that al-Qa'ida could be plotting "spectacular" attacks in the US, with national landmarks or the aviation, oil and nuclear industries as possible targets. But the White House betrayed some irritation at the announcement, and the nation's threat level remained unchanged at yellow, or "elevated". The reason? Once again, a lack of specific information about the time and target of any attack.

Dr Ranstorp described the task of counter-terrorism as "an art, not a science". The same is true of the difficult balancing act between public complacency and public alarm. Last week Mr Blair called on Britons to carry on with their daily lives while remaining watchful: he knows, however, that the Government will face criticism, whether or not the terrorists strike.