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Britain

Airline Bomb Plotters Convicted

2010-07-08

Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Khan and Waheed Zaman were convicted by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court. The three men were among eight tried in connection with an al Qaida-inspired plot to detonate homemade liquid bombs on transatlantic jets. They were cleared by a jury of their role in targeting aeroplanes but put on trial again to face charges of conspiracy to murder. A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said the jury found all three men guilty today. Savant, of Denver Road, Stoke Newington, Khan, of Farnan Avenue, Walthamstow, and Zaman, of Queen's Road, Walthamstow, will be sentenced tomorrow. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, of Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar, of High Wycombe, and Tanvir Hussain, of Leyton, were found guilty of the airline bomb plot last year. The al Qaida-inspired plot led by Ali involved smuggling liquid bombs in drinks bottles on to planes bound for North America. The hydrogen peroxide devices would have been assembled and detonated in mid-air by a team of suicide bombers. Ali singled out seven flights to San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Washington, New York and Chicago that departed within two and a half hours of each other. If successful, the explosions could have exceeded the carnage of the September 11 attacks. The arrest of the gang in August 2006 sparked tight restrictions on carrying liquids on to aircraft which initially caused travel chaos.

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Britain

Jihad suspect has terror case thrown out

2010-02-02

A judge has thrown out the case against a man accused of preparing terrorist acts after ruling he had no case to answer. Prosecutors had alleged that Mohammed Usman Saddique (aged 27) of Walthamstow, east London, England, kept jihadist books and CDs at his home and had contact with convicted members of a plot to blow up transatlantic jets. But the trial, which was being heard at Inner London Crown Court, was aborted yesterday after his defence put in a submission to have it dismissed. The jury had earlier heard that Mr Saddique possessed extremist documents at his home. One CD found at the premises had a folder entitled "Anarchy" which itself contained a subfolder titled "bombs". Files on it carried instructions on how to make explosives, the court heard. The little sod was organized, at least. That's little Saud to you ... In an earlier statement, Mr Saddique confirmed that some of the jihadist material found in his house was his but said they were in his possession "out of curiosity" and were not being kept "with any malicious intent". It was also alleged during the trial that the accused man knew and associated with convicted conspirators of an attempted terrorist plot. Telephone records linked him to Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Tanvir Hussain, prosecutors said. Both men were convicted, alongside Assad Sarwar, in September last year of conspiracy to murder by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft. The cost of that lengthy trial and retrial ran into the tens of millions of pounds, legal sources estimated at the time. It also led to demands for an apology by Muslim convert Donald Stewart-Whyte, who was cleared by the jury of involvement in the plot. Referring to the collapse of the case against Mr Sadddique, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: "The judge felt it should go to trial. Having heard the prosecution case and the defence submission of no case to answer, the judge has decided that the case should not continue."

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Britain

3 UK men accused of providing aid to aircraft plot

2009-10-07

A British prosecutor accused three men Tuesday of conspiring with the mastermind of a plot to kill thousands of airline passengers by blowing up their trans-Atlantic flights using liquid explosives. Prosecutor Peter Wright was making his opening statement on the second day of the trial of Adam Khatib, 22, Mohammed Shamin Uddin, 39, and Nabeel Hussain, 25. Authorities say if the attack had been carried out, it would have been on par with the Sept. 11 attacks. The trio "was prepared to help in the commission of terrorist acts and indeed did so," Wright told jurors at a London court. All three deny the charges but have yet to present their cases. Last month, Abdulla Ahmed Ali was convicted of being the ringleader of a plan to down at least seven trans-Atlantic flights in simultaneous attacks which security officials say were directed by senior Islamic militants in Pakistan. He was given a minimum of 40 years in prison. Two others — Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain — were also convicted of helping plot the attacks.

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Britain

Leader of airline bomb plot told he will spend 40 years in jail

2009-09-15

The British leader of the plot to bomb seven transatlantic planes is facing the prospect of dying in jail after a judge said today he was likely to remain a dangerous and motivated terrorist for the rest of his life. It's surprises like this that prove the universe is independent of our thoughts. Abdulla Ahmed Ali was one of three men sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted last week of planning to lead a squad of suicide bombers in smuggling liquid explosives aboard planes heading from London to North America. The al-Qaida plot could have killed 1,500 people. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Henriques said the terrorists were involved in "the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction. The intention was to perpetrate a terrorist outrage that would stand alongside the events of September 11 2001 in history." He told Ali, 28, the ringleader and a former mobile phone salesman: "You have embraced Islamic extremism and it is that burning extremism that motivated you throughout this conspiracy and is likely to motivate you again. You are likely to remain a serious danger to the public for an indeterminate time." Ali, of Walthamstow, east London, was sentenced to life and told he must serve 40 years before he could be considered for parole. It is the joint highest sentence handed down in a British terrorism case. The judge made it clear the evidence pointed to an attack within days. The cell was arrested on 9-10 August 2006. An email sent by Ali to his controllers in Pakistan on 6 August showed the terrorists were close to staging the attack. The three men, and a fourth member of the cell convicted of conspiracy to murder, were given life with minimum terms of between 22 and 40 years in prison before they can be considered for release. Assad Sarwar, 29, from High Wycombe, will serve a minimum of 36 years. The judge called him a "vital and leading member" of the plot, "trained in bomb making in Pakistan". He bought litres of chemicals to make explosives and in one day made 83 phone calls seeking hydrogen peroxide. "You were the trained chemist and quartermaster and you were in direct communication with Pakistan," the judge said. Tanvir Hussein, 28, of Leyton, east London, was described by the judge as Ali's "right-hand man", modifying the batteries, bottles and bulbs that were to be used to make the bombs to be smuggled past airport security. He was told he would serve 32 years without parole, with the judge accepting he was not a religious fanatic but perhaps had been blinded by his "long-term loyalty to Ali". The cell's fourth member, Umar Islam, 31, of Plaistow, east London, convicted of conspiracy to murder, was told he would serve a minimum of 22 years. The former bus inspector was described by the judge as a "foot soldier" who was unaware the target was blowing aircraft out of the sky. Nadim Radford QC, representing Ali, said he was a victim of political turmoil. Radford said of the defendants: "They were caught in a political turmoil of their own making, where they misjudged what they should do. He was very greatly affected by what he felt was the harm being done to innocent people from his similar background." Radford said the airlines plot was at an early stage when police broke it up. Which should make it ok. After all, the lads never actually blew up any airplanes. They only planned meticulously and acquired the weapons to execute their plan.

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Britain

Airline Bomb Plot Reveals Links to Pakistan

2009-09-09

[Asharq al-Aswat] A plot to blow up at least seven transatlantic aircraft using liquid bombs was masterminded from Pakistan, intelligence services said as more details emerged Tuesday of the complex planned attacks. British police were forced to go to extraordinary lengths to build their case against the men who prosecutors say were hoping to cause more deaths than the September 11, 2001 attacks. The trial, which ended in the convictions of three British Muslims on Monday, was peppered with evidence that members of the London-based gang were frequently in communication with figures linked to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. "In terms of Al-Qaeda involvement, there is a large part of this plot that has been thought through or invented in Pakistan," one senior counter-terrorism source said after the trial. The jury were shown intercepted emails in which Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, asked Pakistani contacts for advice on building bombs in drinks bottles to detonate on flights over the Atlantic. Prosecutors believe the absence of evidence establishing these links had led to a jury in the men's first trial in 2008 failing to reach a verdict that they had plotted to blow up the planes, forcing a second trial to be held. Ken MacDonald, the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions, said: "We felt that this was a strong case from the start, unfortunately the jury in the first trial could not agree. "The additional evidence that we had (in the second trial) were the emails," he told BBC radio. The emails were obtained by a court order in California requiring Yahoo! to disclose them. Reports said the men's main point of contact was Rashid Rauf, a British-born Muslim who fled to the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2002 after the murder of his uncle and developed strong links with Al-Qaeda. Intelligence services also reportedly believe he was a key contact of the gang in the 2005 bombings of the London transport system which killed 52 people. The trial heard that Ali had already been identified as a dangerous radical when he was stopped at London's Heathrow Airport in June 2006 on his return from a trip to Pakistan. Customs officials found a large quantity of batteries and a high-sugar powdered drink in his luggage. Both are ingredients for homemade bombs. He was not arrested, but police broke into his flat one night and installed hidden cameras and microphones. Over the next few months, they watched as Ali and his colleagues experimented with injecting drinks bottles with a mixture of the explosive liquid hydrogen peroxide which they planned to carry on to flights and detonate with a bulb filament. But the biggest counter-terrorism operation ever mounted in Britain, costing 35 million pounds (57 million dollars, 40 million euros), was reportedly almost thrown into jeopardy by US intervention. Fearful that the gang were close to carrying out the plane bombings, the US authorities put pressure on Pakistan to arrest Rauf in 2006. Andy Hayman, a senior police commander who worked on the case, said in the Times newspaper that his detention "hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure." British police were confident that they had the gang completely under surveillance, but Rauf's arrest forced them to bring forward the arrests in Britain when they would have preferred to wait longer. Rauf escaped from police custody in Pakistan in mysterious circumstances in 2007. US officials said they believed they killed him in an attack with an unmanned drone but his death has never been confirmed. The discovery of the plot in 2006 sparked chaos at airports, as authorities worldwide immediately introduced draconian regulations limiting the amount of liquids that passengers can carry on to flights. Many of the rules remain in place.

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Britain

Three British men guilty of airline bomb plot

2009-09-08

[Al Arabiya Latest] Three Britons were found guilty on Monday of plotting to kill thousands by blowing up transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives, in near-simultaneous attacks aimed to cause massive loss of life. Ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali was found guilty of conspiring to murder thousands in the plot, whose discovery triggered wide-ranging new rules on carrying liquids on commercial aircraft. Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, were found guilty on the same charges of plotting to carry out bombings on aircraft flying from London's Heathrow airport to the United States and Canada. The three men were previously found guilty of conspiracy to murder, but the jury in their first trial could not decide on charges that they had plotted to kill people by bringing down airliners. Four other men were found not guilty of the plot and the jury failed to reach a verdict in the case of an eighth suspect, Britain's Press Association reported. The bombers intended to simultaneously destroy at least seven planes carrying over 200 passengers in August 2006 using explosives hidden in soft drink bottles, prosecutors said. Home Secretary Alan Johnson hailed the verdicts, saying: "I am pleased that the jury has recognized that there was a plot to bomb transatlantic flights and that three people have been convicted of that plot."

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Britain

Prosecutor: Britons disguised bombs as drinks

2009-02-17

Eight British Muslims plotted to cause unprecedented carnage by blowing up passenger planes over the Atlantic Ocean with homemade liquid bombs disguised as soft drinks, a prosecutor said at their trial Tuesday. Peter Wright said the men planned to smuggle the bomb ingredients aboard jets bound from Britain to North America disguised as "soft-drinks bottles, batteries and other innocuous items" carried in hand luggage. "They were to be detonated in-flight by suicide bombers," including several of the accused, he said. Eight men aged between 22 and 30 deny conspiracy to murder. But Wright said the defendants were close to carrying out their plan when they were arrested in August 2006. The arrests led to the grounding of hundreds of flights and disruption for thousands of people and triggered huge changes to airport security -- including restrictions on carrying liquids on planes -- that persist to this day. Wright said the plot would have caused "a civilian death toll from terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale." He said alleged ringleaders Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar, both 28, "shared a common interest ... that involved inflicting heavy casualties upon an unwitting civilian population, all in the name of Islam." The defendants, he said, were "men with the cold-eyed certainty of the fanatic." The blasts were intended as "a violent and deadly statement of intent that would have a truly global impact." Wright said that the plot was organized in Britain but was being directed from Pakistan. A court order restricts reporting of some details of the case, which is expected to last 10 months.

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Britain

3 cop plea in aircraft bomb plot

2008-07-14

LONDON: Three men accused of plotting to bring down trans-Atlantic passenger jets with liquid explosives pleaded guilty to planning to set off bombs but maintain they did not seek to destroy airliners, prosecutors said Monday. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 27, and five co-defendants are charged with a plot to kill hundreds of passengers at the height of the summer vacation season by detonating explosives concealed in soft-drink bottles on flights over the Atlantic Ocean or U.S. cities. The unraveling of the alleged plot led to tough new restrictions on the amount of liquids and gels passengers can take in their carry-on bags. Prosecutors said Ali, Sarwar and Hussain had admitted to a charge of conspiring to set off explosions but say that they are innocent of the more serious charge of conspiracy to murder. The eight men are still being tried on the murder conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum life sentence. Ali and Sarwar have told the court they wanted to set off explosions as a publicity stunt to promote an anti-Western documentary. Ali said he hoped a small, nonfatal, bombing -- at Britain's Houses of Parliament, at an oil refinery, or at an airport -- would jolt Londoners and draw attention to his movie, which would be released online. Yeah, regular Spielbergs they were I'll bet.. Ali, Sarwar, Hussain and co-defendants Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30, have also admitted to "conspiring to cause a public nuisance" by publishing alleged martyrdom videos, the prosecution said. The Crown Prosecution Service did not say when the guilty pleas were entered or what sentences the lesser charges carry. Defense attorneys did not address the jury Monday. The eight men are accused of stockpiling enough hydrogen peroxide to create 20 liquid bombs, although they did not create any viable explosives. "We did not want to kill or injure anyone," Ali testified last month. Nah. We're good boys... Prosecutor Peter Wright scoffed at that idea Monday, calling the defendants' accounts "inherently improbable." He said that the attacks were imminent when the men were arrested in August 2006 in raids in and around London. The defendants had even prepared the martyrdom videos to be shown after the airline bombings. Kinda hard to 'splain that one away, innit? Performance art ... The men were "almost ready to go," Wright told Woolwich Crown Court in London. "This was no propaganda video, no documentary, no exercise or stunt -- this was for real," he said. "Human beings ready, able and willing to commit carnage for the sake of Islam." He accused the defendants of wanting "to murder as many civilian passengers as possible upon as many civilian aircraft as possible. "Each was prepared to kill and to do so on a wholly indiscriminate basis, irrespective of age, belief, sex and to do so without the slightest blink of an eye," Wright said. The attack "was intended to be an act of terrorism to not only alter aviation history but also to strike a blow on behalf of radicalized Islamists the world over," he said. In his opening statement in April, Wright said officers found a computer memory stick in Ali's pocket with details of flights from London's Heathrow Airport to Chicago, New York, Boston, Denver, Miami and Montreal. He said that there did not appear to be any interest in return flights. There usually isn't...

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Britain

U.K. Terrorist Suspect Says He Was Filmmaker, Not Plane Bomber

2008-06-02

A man charged with being part of a terrorist plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners denied that he planned to harm anyone, telling a London court that he and friends were making a documentary. Oh. Well. That makes it allright then ... Ahmed Ali, 27, testified that after spending time as an aid worker in refugee camps in Pakistan witnessing ``appalling'' conditions, he decided to make a movie to change public opinion about U.K. foreign policy. The group also planned to set off a small explosive device by the Houses of Parliament that would generate publicity for the film. ``Something like that would be sensational -- it would create mass media attention,'' Ali told a jury in London today. ``Never did we intend or think about murdering anybody.'' Sure, after all, small explosive devices have never killed anyone ... Ali is one of eight men accused by prosecutors of planning ``almost unprecedented carnage,'' by smuggling liquid explosives onto flights for destinations in Canada and the U.S. The investigation following the arrests prompted bans on passengers bringing more than small amounts of liquids and gels onto planes. The men on trial -- Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Mohammed Gulzar, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, and Umar Islam -- have denied wrongdoing. They are all in their 20s. This is the first day of their defense. In April, when the government opened its case, prosecutor Peter Wright said the group was almost ready to mount an attack when they were arrested in August 2006. Had the group succeeded its plot would have resulted in an unprecedented ``civilian death toll for an act of terrorism,'' he said. The group planned to disguise liquid explosives in soft-drink cartons and had identified daily flights from London to Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Washington, New York, and two to Chicago, prosecutors claim. The discovery of the plot caused temporary chaos at airports, with more than 2,380 flights from London canceled in the week after the men's arrest. Prosecutors claim that a computer memory stick owned by Ali contained detailed timetables for the targeted flights. He is the first of the group to testify. Another publicity stunt for the documentary, which would be posted on YouTube, was to film a sequence in which he and his friends would ``make demands in the style of al-Qaeda militants,'' Ali testified. Just a scene in the movie, of course ... Earlier today, Ali spoke of his experiences as an aid worker in Pakistan in 2003, working in refugee camps. Children died every day and many of the refugees, most of whom were Afghans, were ``maimed, with limbs blown off,'' said Ali, a graduate of City University in London.

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Britain

Jet bombing plot mastermind visited Pakistan, court told

2008-04-06

The mastermind of the eight Britons, who allegedly planned to blow up airliners in mid air, had travelled to Islamabad from Heathrow just two months before his arrest in August 2006. At least seven aircraft flying to major cities across North America were the targets, the court was told. But the jury has also heard that a computer memory stick found at the High Wycombe. The jury at Woolwich Crown Court was played parts of one of the martyrdom videos featuring a man said to be defendant Umar Islam, who was shown speaking of a desire to kill non-Muslims. As the chilling martyrdom videos of six of the eight accused were played in Woolwich Crown Court, the prosecution told the jury that one of the accused, Assad Ali Sarwar had travelled to Islamabad from Heathrow in June 2006, just two months before his arrest on August 9. The seven other accused were also arrested at the same time. The prosecution told the court that Assad did not intend to die himself and had direct links to those overseas who may have a clear interest in the success of any such terrorist outrage struck in the name of Islam. The prosecution said the trip to Pakistan was connected to the plot to detonate bombs on board transatlantic aircrafts. Just a day before the arrests in London in August 2006, Pakistani authorities had arrested Rashid Rauf from a city in Punjab. Britain had been asking Pakistan for extradition of Rashid Rauf who escaped from the custody of Rawalpindi police in December 2007 under mysterious circumstances. The prosecution told the court that Assad did not make his own martyrdom video and described him as “custodian” of recordings made by six of his co-defendants. The chilling videos show the British fanatics praising Osama bin Laden and threatening death, terror and destruction in retaliation for US and British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and their policy on Palestine. Those who planned to board and blow up at least seven planes bound for the United States and Canada are all Londoners aged between 23 and 29 and include Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Ibrahim Savant, Mohammed Gulzar, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman, and Umar Islam. The jury has also heard that a computer memory stick found at the High Wycombe home of Mr Sarwar revealed the alleged plotters also considered other UK targets. They included Canary Wharf, a gas pipeline running between Belgium and the UK, other UK airports, as well as companies that store and process hydrogen peroxide. Another memory stick found in Mr Sarwar’s garage contained information about UK power stations, internet service provider exchanges, oil refineries, the National Grid and UK airports, the jury was told. The court also heard how the alleged plotters stockpiled materials needed for their home-made liquid devices, including 18 litres of hydrogen peroxide, wires and syringes, which the prosecution claims they intended to smuggle on to aircraft disguised as 500ml soft drinks.

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Britain

Martyrdom videos claim bombings would avenge US-UK role in Iraq

2008-04-05

British Muslims who hoped to murder about 1,500 people in co-ordinated bomb attacks on trans-Atlantic airliners claimed, in martyrdom videos, that their plot would be revenge for United States and British military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, a prosecutor said on Friday. Prosecutor Peter Wright told jurors at a London court trial that at least six members of the gang videotaped messages, some praising Al Qaeda’s founder, Osama Bin Laden. The eight accused planned to strike at least seven specific jetliners bound for the US and Canada — targeting flights to major cities such as New York, Washington and Toronto in the plot, Wright said.. About 1,500: Prosecutors calculated that about 1,500 people onboard the passenger jets — and potentially scores more on the ground if the planes exploded over cities — could have been killed if the attacks had been carried out.t. Wright said that, on videotapes, the men attempted to justify their attacks, believing the footage would be discovered following their simultaneous suicide missions. A jury was shown clips of several tapes in which the men each sat alone in front of a black flag inscribed with a message in Arabic. In one, Umar Islam, 29, angrily wagged a finger at the camera as he spoke, denouncing the US and UK for their military role in Iraq, Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories. “This is revenge for the actions of the US in the Muslim lands and their accomplices — the British and the Jews,” Islam said. “I say to the non-believers, as you bomb, you will be bombed. As you kill, you will be killed,” he said, referring to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, before the same backdrop, said Bin Laden had warned the West to expect carnage. “Now the time has come for you to be destroyed,” he said. Ali claimed suicide operations would scatter the body parts of non-believers on the streets of Western cities. Islam lambasted the British public, saying it deserved to suffer because it cared more about sports and television soap operas than the plight of Muslims. Wright, who played brief clips of the tapes on Friday, said the messages left little room for ambiguity. He told the jury on Thursday that the group had expressed hopes of recruiting as many as 18 suicide bombers. Seven specific United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada flights from London’s Heathrow Airport to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Toronto and Montreal had been singled out for attack, he said. Though no specific date had been selected for the attack, research conducted by the cell indicated the group planned to strike in a single afternoon in late 2006, Wright said. He said the plotters planned to smuggle hydrogen peroxide-based explosives on board, injecting the mix into bottles of soda. A hollowed out camera battery would have hidden a detonator. The bombs could easily have been assembled in an airliner toilet, Wright said. All eight men, each of whom has ties to Pakistan, deny charges of conspiracy to murder and a charge of planning an act of violence likely to endanger the safety of an aircraft. Both offences carry maximum sentences of life imprisonment. In addition to Islam, Waheed Khan and Ali, the defendants are Assad Sarwar, 27; Tanvir Hussain, 27; Mohammed Gulzar, 26; Ibrahim Savant, 27; and Waheed Zaman, 23.

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Britain

'British gang behind foiled Trans-Atlantic terror plot'

2008-04-04

Extremists plotted suicide attacks on at least seven flights from Britain to the United States in a simultaneous attack of “truly global impact”, a prosecutor said on Thursday. The eight men, whose arrest prompted tough limits on the carrying of liquids in hand baggage on to planes, wanted to target seven flights from London’s Heathrow airport to New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal, prosecutor Peter Wright said as he opened the case against them. They aimed to use liquid explosives in soft drinks bottles to cause “a civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale”, Wright added. He said the accused were “not long off” activating their plan and had talked of up to 18 different suicide bombers targeting flights, when police busted the group in August 2006. The seven flights were operated by United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada. They left Heathrow daily, within roughly two and a half hours of each other — meaning they would have been in mid-air simultaneously, Wright said. “These flights were particularly vulnerable to a co-ordinated attack upon them while in flight. If each of these aircraft was successfully blown up the potential for loss of life was indeed considerable,” he said. “When the mid-flight explosions began the authorities would be unable to prevent the other flights from meeting a similar fate as they would already be in mid-air and carrying their deadly cargo,” he added. “These men and others were actively engaged in a deadly plan” which would have resulted in “a civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale,” he said. In the dock sat “some of those prepared to lose their lives,” he said, adding that they bore the “cold-eyed certainty of the fanatic” and were “indifferent to the carnage that was likely to ensue”. The eight men in the dock at Woolwich Crown Court in London were: Abdulla Ahmed Ali, also known as Ahmed Ali Khan, 27; Assad Sarwar, 27; Tanvir Hussain, 27; Mohammed Gulzar, 26; Ibrahim Savant, 27; Arafat Waheed Khan, 26; Waheed Zaman, 23; and Umar Islam, also known as Brian Young, 29. Seven are from London, while Sarwar lives in the midlands. I'da guessed most of not all of them with the possible exception of Brian were from Pakistain. All deny the charges of conspiracy to commit murder between January 1 and August 11, 2006 and conspiracy to commit an act of violence likely to endanger the safety of an aircraft between the same dates. Per the Khaleej Times, up to 18 could have been involved.

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