Suspects arrested in anti-terror raids earlier this week had been planning to attack UK airports including Heathrow, the UK's main air hub, several newspapers reported yesterday.
Several published reports said one of the 12 suspects, variously identified as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi, was believed to be a senior member of al-Qaeda.
Metropolitan Police refused to say whether al-Hindi was among those arrested.
Intelligence officials in Pakistan told reporters that they found images of Heathrow and other sites on the computers of two arrested al-Qaeda fugitives, and that this information was passed to UK officials.
It was not clear, however, if the information helped lead to the arrests of 12 suspected terrorists earlier this week in the UK.
The reports said al-Hindi, using the codename Bilal, had been in contact with Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, a computer expert arrested in Pakistan last month for alleged links to extremists.
Police arrested 13 young men in a series of raids across the UK on Tuesday, but have said nothing officially about what they were suspected of doing.
One man was released on Wednesday, while police continued to question the others at a high-security police station in west London.
London's Metropolitan Police has said the arrests were part of "continuing and extensive inquiries by police and the Security Service into alleged international terrorism."
Officials have refused to say whether the raids were linked to information Pakistani authorities recently said they had uncovered about threats to the UK and US.
Maps, photographs and other details of possible targets in the US and UK were found on computers belonging to Khan and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian indicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa, said two Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Lahore-based intelligence official involved in the investigation following the July 13 arrest of Khan said his computer contained photographs of Heathrow as well as pictures of underpasses beneath several buildings in London.
Both officials said they were unaware of any information from Khan that led directly to Tuesday's arrests in the UK.
The Times quoted an unidentified Pakistani intelligence official as saying that al-Hindi was believed to have been in the final stages of planning an attack on Heathrow.
Detailed maps of Heathrow were found on Khan's computer, The Times said.
Al-Hindi, "a senior al-Qaeda man," was arrested after information was received from Pakistani intelligence agencies, The Daily Telegraph reported, quoting an unidentified Pakistani official.
Al-Hindi was "planning some sort of operation in Britain," the official told the paper.
The Times of London reported that Khan had sent scores of encrypted messages -- including outline plans for an attack on Heathrow -- to al-Hindi.
The paper also quoted an unidentified senior Metropolitan Police official as saying that one of the men arrested on Tuesday was a "significant figure," but didn't specify whether it was al-Hindi.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS