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LONDON - A suspected al Qaeda operative watched impassively in court on Monday as prosecutors played shaky hand-held video of the New York Stock Exchange and other US financial targets he has admitted planning to bomb.
Briton Dhiren Barot, 34, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to murder in connection with planned attacks in the United States and Britain - the latter including the use of a "dirty bomb" laced with radiological material.
At Monday's sentencing prosecutor Edmund Lawson played video footage he said was shot in April 2001 on a reconnaissance mission by Barot for the attacks in the United States.
Lawson said the bombings were planned in 2000 and 2001 and apparently shelved after the al Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people died.
But he said the plans were later revived and were being worked on in 2004 in the run-up to the suspects' arrest.
"Barot, evidently a member or close associate of the al Qaeda terrorist organisation, led the conspiracy to cause lethal explosions both here and in the United States of America," Lawson told the court. "The plot was to carry out massive explosions here and in the United States."
The 80 minutes of video were at the end of a tape of the Hollywood film "Die Hard with a Vengeance", found after Barot and seven co-defendants were arrested in August 2004.
Barot's co-defendants, who deny involvement, are due to go on trial next April. Under British media law, reporters are banned from reporting details that could prejudice their case.
Hotels and railway stations
Also found were encrypted files containing the plans for the US attacks, which police cracked with the help of a code word discovered during investigations in Pakistan.
The plans were in four computer files, compiled with meticulous detail. "They have the outward appearance, in a sense the feel, of being a formal business proposal," Lawson said.
In the case of Citigroup's New York headquarters, five attack options were considered ranging from vehicle bombs to the use of a hijacked petrol tanker or "flying object", he said.
Lawson said prosecutors had not definitively established the targets in Britain but said investigators had found a computer file with notes on London hotels and three railway stations.
He described these as evidence of "nefarious investigation into the potential for terrorist activity". Inside other computer files, police found research on radioactive materials and the use of radiation dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs".
Lawson said a first "terrorist visit" to Pakistan and the disputed Kashmir region in 1995 documented by Barot described "intensive training in various aspects of terrorism, such as use of weapons and preparation of poisons and explosives".
Later training included a two-week spell in 1999 in the Philippines. Barot then visited the United States between August 17 and Nov 14, 2000 and from March 11 to April 8, 2001.
It was during the latter trip that the video of the NYSE and other buildings was shot.
Lawson said Barot had assumed multiple identities, including the use of a false bank account and passport, "to assist in covering his tracks" as the conspiracy unfolded.
Lawson said prosecutors believed Barot visited Pakistan in April 2004 to show al Qaeda backers his plans to blow up several gas-filled limousines in underground car parks in Britain. Barot has admitted the so-called "Gas Limos Project".
The judge is expected to deliver his sentence on Tuesday.
- REUTERS
