The outcome of Britain's "liquid bomb plot" trial in which eight Islamic extremists were accused of "mass murder on the scale of the September 11 attacks" by planning to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners has caused dismay among government and intelligence officials, analysts said in London Tuesday.
"The government is in aftershock," said one security expert after a jury at a London court failed to convict the defendants on the central charge of "targeting an aircraft," following a six-month jury trial, convicting three of the men instead of the more general charge of "conspiracy to murder."
The plot, uncovered on August 10, 2006, centred on an al Qaeda-inspired plan to blow up simultaneously seven airliners flying from Britain to the US and Canada with home-made liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks, according to the prosecution.
Its dramatic discovery marked a turning point in global air travel with the enforcement of sweeping restrictions on liquids carried in hand luggage. But after a trial based on evidence gathered in one of Britain's biggest surveillance operations, seen by the authorities as having yielded "the strongest evidence yet in a terrorist trial," jurors at Woolwich Crown Court remained unconvinced that airliners were the target. Surveillance evidence presented to the court included a number of chilling "martyrdom" videos as well as footage of a "bomb factory" in a flat in east London where the plotters were seen constructing devices made from hydrogen peroxide in 500 millilitre bottles.
One of the videos, showing the chief accused, warned: "We will take our revenge and anger, ripping amongst your people and scattering your people's body parts responsible for these wars and oppression, decorating the streets." In court, the defendants said the videos were recorded for propaganda purposes as part of a film intended to "publicise injustices against Muslims world-wide."
The jury found three of the men, all British Muslims, guilty of "conspiracy to murder," acquitted one and failed to reach a verdict on the other four. A retrial is now being considered. While the three men convicted, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, can expect long prison terms when sentences are passed in October, failure to link them directly to the airliner plot had come as a "severe blow" to the government and the security services, analysts said. Some were quick Tuesday to blame different approaches in the US and Britain for the setback.
"Whereas the US is engaged in waging a war against terror, ours is a criminal justice approach," leading British security expert Professor Michael Clarke said Tuesday. Although he had no doubt in the murderous plans hatched by the accused, Britain had been pressed by the US to clamp down on the plotters too soon, Clarke said.
"The plots were intercepted when they were only half-formed, but there's no doubt what the intention was," he said. "Going in early can be quite dangerous. And this seems to be one of those really big intelligence bust-ups," said Clarke.
He said a meeting between US President George W Bush and Britain's ex-prime minister Tony Blair on July 28, 2006, had been crucial in prompting the US to push ahead, even though Blair was understood to have cautioned against a premature clampdown. When the US intelligence services were told that the plotters were planning a "dummy run" to test airport security, they urged Pakistan to arrest Rashid Rauf, a Briton connected to the plot, on August 9, a move that triggered the immediate arrest of the eight conspirators in Britain, it was revealed Tuesday.
Peter Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard who led the bomb plot inquiry, wrote in the Times Tuesday: "On the evening of August 9, 2006, I was told that a man connected to the British terrorists had been arrested in Pakistan. This was not good news. We were at a critical point in building a case against them." Clarke said that "within a matter of minutes" he decided to move against the British plotters, fearing that they would be tipped off and could destroy evidence or "panic and mount a desperate attack." He remained convinced that airliners were the target of the plot, Clarke wrote, and that the lives of many innocent people had been saved.