Trio's plot for massacre in the skies

LONDON - Three British Muslims were convicted yesterday of plotting to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" by blowing up transatlantic airliners in an attempt to kill thousands of people in the air and on the ground.

In a plot that changed rules on what passengers can carry on to planes, the terror cell, operating under guidance from jihadist overseers in Pakistan and inspired by al Qaeda, planned to simultaneously detonate liquid bombs disguised in soft drink bottles on board at least seven flights from London's Heathrow Airport to North American cities, a court heard.

The conspiracy, which according to one suicide video wanted to create "a rain of body parts on the streets of America", was thwarted in August 2006 by the biggest counter-terror operation ever mounted in Britain. It brought chaos to Heathrow and led to new, worldwide restrictions on passengers' hand luggage, with a ban on the carrying of liquids on to aircraft.

The convictions will offer some relief to ministers who were criticised for introducing the luggage restrictions, and to prosecutors who asked for a retrial after a jury failed to reach verdicts on key charges last year. The combined cost of the police investigation, Operation Overt, and the two trials is estimated at £135 million ($319 million).

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, a computer engineering graduate, of Walthamstow, northeast London, led the plot. He was arrested with details of flights from Britain to San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Washington, New York and Chicago (two) within a two-hour period. Such was his commitment to his cause that he discussed taking his infant son on the suicide mission, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court were told.

The cell's "quartermaster", Assad Sarwar, 29, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Tanvir Hussain, 28, from Leyton, east London, who helped to build the bombs, were convicted with Ali of conspiracy to murder by causing explosions on board aircraft. Over eight months, they painstakingly gathered equipment to make liquid explosives and liaised with contacts in Pakistan as they sought to recruit an inner circle of British Islamic extremists to carry out the attack.

Unknown to Ali, when he returned to Heathrow from Pakistan in June 2006, agents opened his baggage before it reached the arrivals hall. Inside they found a tin of Tang and a large number of AAA Toshiba batteries. Then on August 6, 2006, Ali entered a small communications shop in Walthamstow to sit down in front of a pay-as-you-go internet screen.

Watched by a plain-clothes officer, the computer systems graduate opened the timetable page of the American Airlines website and began to note down the times of flights heading from London to North America. Crucially, the services were all leaving from Heathrow airport's Terminal Three on the same day and all within a window of about 2 hours. The information led the Security Service and Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command to the conclusion that the plot was moving to its "execution phase".

On August 9, after hurried consultation with the US authorities, the police moved in to arrest Ali and Sarwar as they sat on a wall outside Waltham Forest Town Hall. When officers asked Sarwar, whose work to buy the ingredients for the bombs had begun in April, if there was anything dangerous in his red Nissan Primera, he had the presence of mind to replied: "Only the handbrake." The contents of his boot, in fact, contained damning evidence.

In the boot were two of six suicide videos, while in Ali's jacket was a computer memory stick containing the details of seven coinciding flights out of Heathrow to North America along with information about hand luggage rules at BAA airports. In a second pocket was a diary containing what prosecutors described as a "blueprint" for the attacks.

At their earlier trial last year, the three men were convicted of conspiring to murder using the devices, but the jury could not decide whether their plan extended to attacking airliners.

Yesterday, after six months of evidence and 54 hours of deliberation, the second jury decided that the scheme had indeed existed.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, head of Scotland Yard's Counter-Terrorism Command, said: "If these terrorists had been successful, many people would have lost their lives. Many more would have died if they had chosen to detonate their bombs over land. They intended to cause carnage and bring terror into the lives of people around the globe."

In one of six suicide videos recorded by the plotters, Ali cited Osama Bin Laden as his inspiration and warned of "a rain of body parts on the streets of America".

The jury rejected Ali, Sarwar and Hussain's defence that the plot was a publicity stunt designed to attack British foreign policy. They will be sentenced on Monday.

- INDEPENDENT