Questions over limited evidence in 'major terrorist plot'

LONDON - The case against 12 Muslim men involved in what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described as a "major terrorist plot" amounted to one email and a handful of ambiguous telephone conversations, it emerged yesterday after all the men were released without charge.

Eleven Pakistani students and one British man were freed after extensive searches of 14 addresses in northwest England failed to locate evidence of terrorist activity, according to security sources. Police did not find any explosives, firearms, target lists, documents or any material which could have been used to carry out an attack.

Yesterday, the Government's own reviewer of terrorism legislation said he would investigate the case.

The Home Office said it would deport the 11 Pakistani men, who are aged 22 to 38 and were in Britain on student visas, because the Government believed they represented a threat to national security.

According to security sources, the operation was launched after the interception of telephone calls and emails which pointed towards a bombing campaign orchestrated by al Qaeda.

But yesterday a senior Pakistani defence official said the British authorities had failed to consult them adequately before carrying out the arrests and greater co-operation would have avoided "embarrassing mistakes" for the British Government.

he only British man questioned for 13 days in connection with the alleged plot may have been held on the strength of a single "cryptic" email.

Lawyers for Hamzah Khan Shenwari, a 42-year-old security guard and delivery driver from Manchester, disclosed that he had entered Britain nine years ago and won political asylum following his treatment at the hands of the Taleban.

Shenwari, who does not own a computer, was asked by police about an email sent by one of the arrested men although the contents of the message were never made available to his defence team.

- INDEPENDENT