U.K. bomb plotters admit 'nuisance'

Jul 16, 2008

Mitch Potter, Europe Bureau

LONDON–They changed the way the world flies. Now the British-born men accused of plotting to blow a Toronto-bound jetliner to smithereens with liquid explosives are changing their plea.

Five of the eight men facing maximum life sentences in the alleged 2006 transatlantic bomb plot targeting flights to Toronto and five other cities unexpectedly pleaded guilty to lesser charges yesterday, including "conspiring to cause a public nuisance" by publishing videos threatening attacks.

As the three-month trial entered its final phase in a London courthouse, the jury yesterday learned that three defendants accused as ringleaders – Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27 – now admit to a plan to set off bombs, but not, they insist, with the intention of targeting passenger planes or even causing death.

Instead, the defence maintains, the bombers aspired to score a propaganda coup with non-lethal explosions at Heathrow Airport and the British House of Commons.

It was also revealed that they and two other defendants – Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30 – pleaded guilty to the public nuisance charge relating to videos discovered after their August 2006 roundup by British security teams in raids in and around London.

All eight face maximum life sentences on the more severe charges of conspiracy to commit mass murder using explosives disguised in soft-drink bottles. The jury is to weigh that question after the trial comes to a close next week.

British terrorism experts said the unexpected switch to guilty pleas on lesser charges further complicates the trial's outcome and also raises new questions about the gravity of the original threat, which prosecutors say was taking shape against seven specific flights from London's Heathrow Airport to destinations including Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

"You have to ask yourself, why would the defendants agree to the insane legal defence of pleading guilty to lesser charges when they face life in prison? That just is not done – and it makes you question the whole case itself," said Bob Ayers, a defence and security expert with the London-based think-tank Chatham House.

"Now one wonders at the possibility that the jury may send these people walking with a shorter sentence – five years or three years in prison – that certainly wouldn't reflect the gravity of what is alleged.

"The whole case underscores the fact that terror investigations today are approached with a very healthy dose of 'better safe than sorry.' The intention is not to built a slam-bang, open-and-shut dead certain prosecution case. The intention is to save lives. And even if they act prematurely, that is better than not acting soon enough."

Crown Prosecutor Peter Wright yesterday dismissed as "inherently improbable" defence claims that the accused men aspired to set off a non-lethal explosion in London as a publicity stunt to draw attention toa` a documentary they were making on the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This was no propaganda video, no documentary, no exercise or stunt – this was for real," Wright said in his closing argument at Woolwich Crown Court. "Human beings ready, able and willing to commit carnage for the sake of Islam."

Wright said the defendants were "almost ready to go" when the arrests were ordered. The eight men are accused of stockpiling hydrogen peroxide with the intention of smuggling it onto aircraft in soft-drink bottles and preparing bombs on board. None of the defendants is believed to have created any viable explosives prior to the arrests.

Air travel security was transformed in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 raids with the imposition of unprecedented new passenger codes that strictly limited carry-on liquids. British Airways alone was forced to cancel nearly 1,300 flights in the first week of the heightened security alert.

The alleged plot also attracted a great deal of skeptical commentary, most notably from Lt.-Col. (Ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former British Army explosives expert, who described as "fiction" the possibility that the bombers could have succeeded in mixing and detonating the volatile liquids in mid-air.

As the jury readies to separate fact from fiction, it should also carefully weigh the element of "fantasy," according to Bill Durodie, a senior lecturer in risk and corporate security at Cranfield University.

"The so-called jihadists in Britain also very much tend to be fantasists and wannabe terrorists. We are talking about small groups who are very weak in their capabilities. They talk a lot, but they seem almost laughably incapable of lighting shoes on airplanes or gas tanks in cars," Durodie told the Star.

"That doesn't mean that a very determined individual, or even a very determined idiot, can't one day manage to pull it off. We're all mature enough to understand there is no level of security that will ultimately prevent everything."

Durodie said regardless of the jury's ruling, the liquid bomb plot already has earned its place in history by dint of the sheer enormity of the security response.

Source: The Daily star, Dhaka

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/uk-bomb-plotters-admit--nuisance-/d/236