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September 7, 2009 Mass murder at 30,000 feet: Islamic extremists guilty of airline bomb plot Philippe Naughton Three British Muslims were found guilty today of conspiracy to murder thousands of passengers and crew in an unprecedented airline bomb plot that could have proved as deadly as the 9/11 attacks. After a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court, jurors found the ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed, and two other men, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, guilty of plotting to use liquid bombs to blow up airliners en route from Heathrow to the United States. Another defendant, Umar Islam, was found guilty of a more...

POLICE this morning arrested suspected Islamic extremists who they believe were plotting a suicide bomb attack on an army base in Sydney's west. Police swooped about 4.30am, executing 19 warrants on homes in the Melbourne suburbs of Glenroy, Carlton, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston, Epping and Colac. The raids came after a suicide bomb plot by suspected Islamic extremists in Melbourne was uncovered.The group is thought to be linked to extremists in Somalia. Police believe the group was planning to launch an attack on Sydney's Holsworthy Barracks. The mass counter-terrorism operation, the second-largest ever in Australia, involved the...

Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that former US president Jimmy Carter was the target of a thwarted assassination attempt, according to Israel Radio. Reportedly, there was a cluster of explosive devices stashed near a road he was scheduled to travel during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

President Jimmy Carter says he will ask the Obama administration to remove the militant Palestinian group from the U.S.-designated terror list, just as Hamas says it foiled a bomb plot against Carter..

EXCLUSIVE: Four New York City men were arrested Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up New York City synagogues and other city locations, WNBC's Jonathan Dienst has learned. Raids by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force in the Bronx captured the suspected ringleader and three followers in what law enforcement sources are calling a homegrown terrorist plot. Investigators stress the suspects' meetings had been infiltrated early on and there was "no chance" the alleged plot could succeed. Investigators said several of the suspects are Muslims who allegedly talked about destroying two Jewish temples, including at least one...

MIAMI, (AP) -- Five men were convicted Tuesday of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices in hopes of igniting an anti-government insurrection. The jury in Miami acquitted another member of the so-called "Liberty City Six" in the sixth day of deliberations. Two previous trials ended in mistrials when jurors could not agree on the men's guilt or innocence. They were arrested in June 2006 on charges of plotting terrorism with an undercover FBI informant they believed was from al-Qaida. Defense attorneys said terrorist talk recorded on dozens of FBI audio and...

MIAMI (AP) -- An uncooperative juror has been replaced on the panel in Miami deliberating the case of six men accused of plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and attack FBI offices. . . . U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said Tuesday the juror had violated her duty by refusing to deliberate and casting doubt on the law.

Two Montgomery County teenagers have been charged with arson and conspiracy to commit murder in an alleged plot to kill the principal at their White Oak high school with a nail-filled bomb and then trigger a major explosion inside the school, authorities said yesterday. The Springbrook High School students -- juniors ages 18 and 17 -- are suspected of having set three fires at the school, including one Tuesday before the discovery of the plot that led to their arrests, police said. According to police, the students planned "in the near future" to throw the bomb into the principal's office,...

BRITAIN was just “10 days from disaster’’ when police swooped on terror suspects allegedly plotting to blow up shoppers and young partygoers. Evil al-Qaida bombers were ready to unleash the UK’s bloodiest ever attack with a series of bombs near the home of Manchester United, security sources confirmed last night. The gang had targeted three shopping centres – including one close to United’s Old Trafford stadium – for a horror assault on “western hedonism”. And they planned to blow up the city’s trendy Birdcage nightclub, often packed with celebrities including the champions’ star striker Cristiano Ronaldo. Police realised the terrorists...

An al-Qaeda cell was days away from carrying out an "Easter spectacular" of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on shopping centres in Manchester, police believe. Sources told The Daily Telegraph that the arrests of 12 men in the north west of England on Wednesday were linked to a suspected plan to launch a devastating attack this weekend. Some of the suspects were watched by MI5 agents as they filmed themselves outside the Trafford Centre on the edge of Manchester, the Arndale Centre in the city centre, and the nearby St Ann's Square. Police were forced to round up the alleged plotters...

Local Anarchist Group Has Affinity for Violence590 am KLBJ reports this afternoon that the Molotov cocktail plot involving two Austin men at last week’s Republican National Convention may be connected to the recent fire at the Texas Governor’s Mansion. Two members of an Austin based anarchist group called “The Austin Affinity Group” are locked up accused in a plot to use Molotov cocktails to disrupt the Republican Convention. Now investigators are trying to determine if the pair are connected to the fire that destroyed the Governors Mansion. News Radio 590-KLBJ’Security Analyst, Fred Burton from Stratfor.com says the “Austin Affinity” may...

LONDON - In chilling videos shown to a jury Friday, men accused of plotting to bring down jetliners over the Atlantic called for revenge for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and praised Osama bin Laden. Six of the eight defendants videotaped messages denouncing the West for what they said was its suppression of Muslims, prosecutor Peter Wright said as he outlined his case to jurors at a London court. The defendants, all Britons with ties to Pakistan, are accused of plotting to blow up at least seven jetliners bound for the United States and Canada in 2006. Some of...

LONDON - Eight British men planned to set off homemade bombs aboard at least seven airliners flying over the Atlantic to the United States and Canada, hoping to kill hundreds in a mammoth terror attack, a prosecutor said Thursday as their trial opened. Prosecutor Peter Wright said the men had plotted to strike United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada flights at the height of the summer vacation season in 2006. Details of seven specific flights from London's Heathrow airport to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Toronto and Montreal were stored on a computer memory stick, he said in...

LONDON - Jury selection began Wednesday for the trial of eight British men accused of planning to bomb airliners bound for the United States and Canada in order to kill hundreds of passengers in a major terrorism plot. Prosecutors allege the group planned a series of coordinated suicide attacks in 2006, hoping to detonate improvised explosives concealed in containers of liquids or gels aboard flights heading from London to the U.S. and Canada. A police inquiry into the purported plot caused major disruption to flights in August 2006 in Britain, and eventually led to tight restrictions on the amount of...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Somali immigrant to 10 years in prison for plotting to blow up an Ohio shopping mall with a man later convicted of being an al-Qaida terrorist. Nuradin Abdi, a cell phone salesman before his arrest, will be deported to Somalia after serving the sentence. U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley imposed the sentence as part of a plea deal Abdi agreed to in July. In a 20-minute statement to the court, Abdi's attorney Mahir Sherif said his client apologized to the people of the United States, the people of Ohio and the...

With their investigation moving at breakneck speed, the police expanded their hunt on Sunday for the plotters of attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow that the British government called the work of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Officers raided homes in three cities and arrested another suspect, bringing the total to five, including at least one identified as a medical doctor... None of the five suspects are British citizens, a senior Western official said. A gas canister was removed Sunday from a vehicle that burned Saturday after crashing at Glasgow Airport.

POLICE were last night hunting an Iraqi, suspected of plotting car-bomb attacks in Britain, who went on the run just days before two vehicles packed with petrol, gas and nails were found in central London. The first device was discovered in a Mercedes parked outside one of the city's biggest nightclubs, Tiger Tiger, at about 1am when hundreds were packed inside for a ladies' night. Police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw fumes inside the car, defused the bomb. Officers later found similar materials in a Mercedes that had been parked nearby. They said it contained gas, fuel...

A man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder people in terrorist campaigns in Britain and the US.Dhiren Barot, of north London, planned to use a radioactive "dirty bomb" in one of a series of attacks in the UK, Woolwich Crown Court has heard. He intended to cause "injury, fear, terror and chaos", the court was told. Barot also plotted to carry out explosions in US cities that were "designed to kill as many innocent people as possible".

A British Muslim yesterday admitted plotting a series of co-ordinated terrorist attacks in this country including one involving a radioactive "dirty bomb". Dhiren Barot, from Kingsbury, north London, also pleaded guilty to planning attacks against the IMF, World Bank and financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark. Dhiren Barot pleaded guilty Edmund Lawson, QC, told Woolwich Crown Court, south London: "These plans to carry out explosions at those premises with no warning were basically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible." Barot described a car bomb plot called the "Gas Limos Project" as "the main cornerstone of...

Lebanon spy agency led Germans to bombmaker BERLIN (Reuters) - Lebanon's military intelligence agency gave German authorities information that led to the arrest of a Lebanese man the Germans suspect planted suitcase bombs at two train stations, German prosecutors said on Monday. "The decisive tipoff about the arrested suspect came on Friday evening from the military intelligence agency in Lebanon," said Frauke-Katrin Scheuten, spokeswoman for the German Federal Prosecutors office. On Saturday, German police detained one of two men they suspect came close to exploding makeshift bombs on two trains in the cities of Dortmund and Koblenz last month. Police...