British suspects are said to have had other targets

LONDON —  A group of young British Muslims accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic jetliners had accumulated files on a wide range of other potential targets, including a tunnel under the River Thames at Greenwich and a major gas pipeline, a prosecutor said Friday.

In the second day of the trial of the eight men on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and acts of terrorism, prosecutors presented surveillance of a “bomb factory” the men allegedly set up in a run-down London apartment. The prosecution also played portions of six “martyrdom videos” in which the men declared their readiness to be killed attacking the U.S. and Britain for the nations’ roles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.

The solemn-faced young men in the videos acknowledge that they are not foreign antagonists but British citizens, raised in the West but determined to punish what they see as the complacency of fellow citizens in the face of Muslim suffering.

“I do not consider anyone innocent . . . while their sons and their daughters and their soldiers or whatever are . . . pillaging the Muslim lands of its resources and dishonoring our Muslim brothers and sisters,” Umar Islam, 29, says against the backdrop of a black flag inscribed in Arabic, in a video excerpt played to the jury.

“Most of you are too busy, you know, watching ‘Home and Away’ and ‘EastEnders,’ complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to even care [about] anything,” he says of fellow Britons. “I know, because I’ve come from that.”

Tanvir Hussain, 27, says in his video that the group is aiming at “economic, government and military” targets.

“Collateral damage is going to be inevitable, and people are going to die, because, you know, it’s work at a price,” Hussain says. “I only wish I could do this again, you know, come back and . . . just do it again and again until people come to their senses and realize, you know, don’t mess with the Muslims.”

Following the arrests of nearly two dozen suspects in August 2006, British authorities were tight-lipped about the investigation, dubbed Operation Overt, that had triggered the arrests and weeks of searches throughout suburban London.

Only as the trial has opened in London’s Woolwich Crown Court has the massive extent of the police surveillance operation become apparent. Prosecutor Peter Wright has presented a detailed picture of a group of disparate men in their 20s united in their alleged determination to blow up at least seven transatlantic passenger jets with homemade liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks.

The evidence includes surveillance of the men on shopping trips to buy suitcases, wires, batteries and large quantities of explosive hydrogen peroxide.

Photos shown to the jury depict the suspects entering and leaving a Walthamstow area apartment, which was purchased for $280,000 and stocked with the makings of their would-be bombs. Records of searches reveal stashes of bomb-making equipment in woods near the suspects’ homes and CDs featuring videos of beheadings and executions and of roadside bombs killing U.S. servicemen in Iraq -- along with computer files containing what prosecutors say were plans for suicide bombings and lists of what authorities believe were targets.

Two compact discs found at the home of one of the suspects had 25 photographs of the area around a 1,217-foot pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, along with photographs of a nearby university campus and the locations of closed-circuit television cameras.

Files on computer memory sticks included information about a key gas pipeline linking Britain and Belgium, Britain’s electricity grid, the nation’s major Internet service provider exchange, the new control tower at Heathrow Airport, several oil refineries and nuclear power stations.

In surveillance tapes made after police planted a bug in the Walthamstow apartment, Hussain and a man identified as one of the ringleaders, Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27, discussed “locations in the USA” and “the desire to find out the 10 most popular destinations for British travelers,” Wright told the jury.

And in a hint that the defendants may not have been acting alone, prosecutors revealed passport records and tickets showing that one of the defendants, Assad Sarwar, 27, had flown to Pakistan just two months before his arrest.

Wright also read from handwritten quotations found at Ali’s house, noting that the defendant had a wife and 9-month-old son at the time of his arrest.

“If I was given the news that I will be marrying the most beautiful wife and the news of having a baby boy just born,” it said, “it is more dear to my heart that I’ll be waiting in a tent in the cold, dark, chilly wind, waiting for dawn so that I may attack the enemy.”

At that point, Justice David Calvert-Smith prepared to dismiss the jury for the weekend.

“Go home, and as best you can, empty your minds,” he admonished. “And by Sunday night, maybe you won’t be thinking of what Mr. Wright’s been telling you.”

--

[email protected]