FUTURE TERRORIST plots, such as the bid to blow up seven airliners in 2006, which led to multiple convictions this week, could become harder to stop in the United Kingdom, leading security experts have warned.
On Monday, three men, Abdulla Ahmed Ali (28), Tanvir Hussain (28) and Assad Sarwar (29), were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of involvement in the plot, and face sentencing next week.
They had planned to explode soft drinks bottles filled with hydrogen peroxide on the United States- and Canadian-bound aircraft as they flew across the Atlantic within two hours of each other, the court was told.
Following the convictions, British intelligence services warned that Pakistan-based al-Qaeda operatives were still attempting to target airliners, to repeat the impact made by the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks.
However, the leading security think tank, the Royal United Services’ Institute (RUSI) said British terrorist plots are more likely now to be run by British-born Muslims with very little assistance from more experienced leaders abroad.
“UK jihadi terrorist cells are chiefly self-help groups consisting of untrained, or semi-trained, dangerous amateurs leading some police professionals to predict that this will seem like a golden age of counterterrorism – when we were both successful and lucky,” the RUSI said.
Describing post-2006 conspiracies in the UK as “relatively amateur”, RUSI said al-Qaeda is having “less direct involvement in terrorist planning” since Nato forces entered Afghanistan and arrests in Europe after the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings.
British-born terrorists, they said, operate in cells to prevent penetration by security services, but then meet in public – sometimes in “paint-balling” games – thus drawing attention to themselves. “Most of the plotters have left a trail of forensics behind . . .
“The tradecraft of UK jihadi terrorists is extremely variable. For the movement as a whole this is not a problem. Amateurs are as dangerous as professionals if they are lucky, and if there are enough amateurs plotting, some of them will be lucky. Those who are not keep the security services stretched and public anxieties high,” said the RUSI.
The planned attack on the airliners created major tensions between the UK and US security agents, who feared the British would be unable to stop the explosives from getting on board.
Birmingham-born Rashid Rauf, the suspected architect of the attacks, was arrested in Pakistan – on US orders, the British believe, which forced Scotland Yard to arrest the men far earlier than they had planned. In December 2006, a court in Rawalpindi found no evidence Rashid Rauf had been involved in terrorist activities. Last November he was reported killed in an attack in North Waziristan.
The three men convicted on Monday had been found guilty in an earlier trial of conspiracy to murder, but the jury then could not agree on whether they had planned to explode the devices on board the airliners.
The outcome of the case is being taken by many as a vindication of the UK’s traditional legal system, including jury trials, though it has strengthened calls for intercepted telephone and e-mail messages to be used in trials. Currently, they can only be used in a British court if they are intercepted outside of the UK.
