Bomb plot trio to face sentence

Three Islamic extremists are to be sentenced for a suicide bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in a bid to kill thousands.

The al Qaida-inspired terror cell planned to detonate home-made liquid bombs on board flights bound for major north American cities.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty of conspiracy to murder on a mass scale by detonating the bombs on airliners following the largest ever counter-terrorism operation in the UK.

If the plot had been successful, the explosions could have exceeded the carnage of the September 11 attacks. Ali, 28, of Walthamstow, east London, Sarwar 29, of Walton Drive, High Wycombe, and Hussain, 28, of Nottingham Road, Leyton, will be sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court.

The trio were convicted at the same court of conspiracy to murder in the first trial last year but retried, along with five other men, for the airliner plot after the first jury failed to reach verdicts on those charges.

Counter-terrorist police and the security services spent more than £35 million foiling the plot and bringing Ali and the others to justice. The arrest of the gang in August 2006 sparked tight restrictions on carrying liquids on to aircraft which initially caused travel chaos.

British-born Ali was inspired by the July 7 bombers and Osama bin Laden and considered taking his baby son on his suicide mission.

He planned to smuggle home-made bombs disguised as soft drinks on to passenger jets run by United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada. The hydrogen peroxide devices would have been assembled and detonated in mid-air by a team of suicide bombers. Ali was found guilty of conspiracy to murder last September, but the previous jury failed to reach verdicts on the airline plot.

He 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. Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic would have been left powerless to stop the destruction once the first bomb exploded.

Police said the plot was drawn up in Pakistan with detailed instructions passed to Ali during frequent trips to its lawless border with Afghanistan. They believe a mystery al Qaida bombmaker was responsible for the ingenious liquid bomb design, concealed within 500ml Oasis or Lucozade bottles.

source: www.portsmouth.co.uk