British police have charged eight terrorist suspects with conspiring to commit murder and use radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals or explosives to cause "fear or injury" in a case involving an alleged top al-Qaeda operative at the center of a US terror alert this month.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft said that federal authorities were determining whether to press charges in the United States against the men, including the top al-Qaeda suspect accused of having surveillance plans of financial institutions in New York, Washington and New Jersey.
Tuesday's charges for the first time officially linked the Aug. 3 arrests across Britain and a series of arrests last month in Pakistan to the Aug. 1 terrorism alerts surrounding the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Inc headquarters, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank buildings in Washington, and the Prudential Financial Inc building in Newark, NJ.
Ashcroft said the Department of Justice had been working closely with British authorities and that FBI agents and analysts would continue sharing information.
"In addition, prosecutors from the Justice Department's Counterterrorism Section and the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan will explore every aspect of this case and evaluate whether additional charges, including potential charges in the United States, are approp-riate," Ashcroft said in a statement issued from Washington.
A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 32-year-old Dhiren Barot was the key al-Qaeda suspect charged with possessing the surveillance plans. Barot has previously been identified as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi.
US counterterrorism officials have said that they believe Barot, known by dozens of aliases including Issa al-Britani, was the author of documents, written in fluent English, describing surveillance at US financial buildings during 2000 and 2001. The information was found on computers and in e-mails during the July raids in Pakistan.
Barot was described as a trusted senior al-Qaeda operative who was sent in early 2001 to do surveillance on possible economic and ``Jewish'' targets in New York on the orders of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, according to US interrogations of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Pakistani officials said this week that Barot, known as a veteran of the Islamic militant battle against Indian forces in Kashmir, also traveled this past March to a militant hideout near the Pakistan-Afghan border and met with other terrorist suspects.
According to the British police charges, Barot; Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24; Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31; Omar Abdul Rehman, 20; Junade Feroze, 28; Zia ul Haq, 25; Qaisar Shaffi, 25; and Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, were accused of conspiring "with other persons unknown" to commit murder between January 2000 and Aug. 4, 2004.
The eight also were charged with conspiring between the same dates to cause a public nuisance by using radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives to cause "disruption, fear or injury."
Barot and Tarmohammed were charged separately with possessing a reconnaissance plan of the Prudential Building in violation of the Terrorism Act.
Barot was charged with possession of notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters, and of a reconnaissance plan concerning the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund, and the Citigroup building in New York.
Following the Aug. 1 terror alert involving those buildings and the World Bank in Washington, the US government acknowledged it had no evidence of plans for imminent attacks.
Shaffi was charged with possessing an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook" containing information on the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.
A ninth man, Matthew Philip Monks, 32, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon.
The eight men were due to make a first court appearance yesterday at Belmarsh high security prison in London.
Mudassar Arani, a lawyer representing seven of the men, said they had been psychologically abused through being held in solitary confinement and in some cases stopped from reading the Koran, and claimed one had been hit in the face by police when he was arrested.
The Aug. 3 arrests sparked fears of a plot to attack London's Heathrow Airport, but the airport was not mentioned in the charges against the men.
The British raids were linked to the July arrest in Pakistan of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer engineer and al-Qaeda suspect, US and Pakistani officials have said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS