Britain laid charges against eight terror suspects Tuesday, including conspiracy to murder and possession of surveillance plans of the New York Stock Exchange and other US-based financial institutions.
The men, detained in a police swoop in London and other parts of England two weeks ago, were also charged with planning to use deadly weapons possibly including radioactive materials and explosives, police said in a statement.
Between January 2000 and their arrest, they had "conspired together and with other persons unknown to commit public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives," the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
Their arrest on August 3 followed a major crackdown of alleged al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and a heightened state of terrorist alert in the United States.
Two of the suspects were charged with possessing reconnaissance plans and documents for the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, and the headquarters of major financial companies Citigroup and Prudential in the New York area.
US officials cranked up security in early August around those key financial centres after the Pakistani operation uncovered computer files containing detailed surveillance plans of those same buildings.
None of the eight men Tuesday were charged under the name of Abu Issa al-Hindi, whom US officials said had been "intimately involved" in producing and perhaps writing reconnaissance reports found on computer disks in Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence officials had told AFP earlier this month that one of the men being held after the arrests in Britain was al-Hindi.
Home Secretary David Blunkett said Tuesday he had been informed of the charges against the eight, who will appear before a judge Wednesday, said he had been "kept regularly updated throughout the investigations".
"We must now let the judicial process take its course," he said.
The men, aged 19 to 32, were named by the Metropolitan Police as Dhiren Barot, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, Abdul Aziz Jalil, Omar Abdul Rehman, Junade Feroze, Zia Ul Haq, Qaisar Shaffi and Nadeem Tarmohammed.