BRITAIN:Fully radicalised on their return from jihadi camps, cell members decided to put their ideology into action, writes Mary Fitzgerald
Mohammed Junaid Babar's mother, a bank employee at the World Trade Center, narrowly escaped death on September 11th. For her son, the attacks marked the beginning of a personal journey through an international jihadi network that would eventually lead him to become the first al-Qaeda supergrass to give evidence in a British court.
His testimony proved crucial to the fertiliser bomb plot trial that ended with five men - his former co-conspirators - being jailed for life at the Old Bailey yesterday.
Babar, an American who turned supergrass after being picked up by the FBI, said the plotters "believed the UK should be hit because of its support of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq". The cell wanted to target British "pubs, trains and nightclubs . . . because British soldiers are killing Muslims," he told the court.
Babar claimed senior al-Qaeda figures wanted the cell to carry out several simultaneous attacks. A number of possible targets were mooted including the British gas pipeline network, a shopping centre and the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London.
The story that unravelled over the duration of the year-long trial was, in many ways, a familiar one. Young Muslim men, fired up by issues such as the Kashmir conflict, drift into the orbit of radical organisations that flirt with jihadi ideology. Several of those on trial had been influenced by al-Muhajiroon, the now-banned group set up by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed.
In a recent interview with The Irish Times, Bakri denied knowing all of the defendants but one. He said this man's parents had sought his advice after becoming worried about their son's radicalisation. Bakri, who Babar identified as a major personal influence, denied any knowledge of the plot.
Fully radicalised, the key cell members decided to put their ideology into action, travelling to Pakistan to train at various jihadi camps. On their return they began plotting in earnest.
The group bought 600kg of ammonium nitrate and kept it at a storage unit in west London. Suspicious staff tipped off police but some of the men were already on MI5's radar.
Police replaced the fertiliser with a harmless substance and kept the group under surveillance before seizing the suspects in raids.
It later emerged that what became Operation Crevice, the biggest surveillance operation ever mounted in Britain, began as an MI5 investigation into a suspect called Muhammed Quayyum Khan.
The court was told Quayyum - known as Q - was instructed by a senior al-Qaeda figure called Abdul Hadi. Now in US custody in Guantánamo Bay after his recent capture in Iraq, Hadi provided funding to militant groups in Pakistan, in addition to helping young British Muslims to travel to jihadi training camps in south Asia.
In early 2004, MI5 intercepted a telephone conversation between two of Quayyum's associates, one in Pakistan, the other in Britain. They were discussing the quantities and materials needed to construct a fertiliser bomb.
Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit was then drafted in to assist with the surveillance operation. More than 97 telephone lines were intercepted and 3,500 hours of surveillance tapes were compiled from bugs hidden in the plotters' homes and cars.
A half-built remote-controlled detonator was later found at the home of Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a technician currently awaiting trial in Canada.
The trial's end also revealed a disturbing link between the cell and those who carried out the London Transport bombings in July 2005.
The ringleader of the July 7th attacks, Mohammad Siddique Khan, was seen on four occasions in 2004 with one of the fertiliser bomb plotters, Omar Khyam. MI5 agents even recorded the two discussing terrorism and at one point intelligence officers followed Khan back to his Leeds home.
Khyam also met another of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, on three occasions.
However, police and intelligence officers dismissed the future London bombers as "peripheral" figures, and no action was taken against them even after Khyam and his fellow plotters were arrested.
The link was deliberately kept from the Old Bailey jury for fear of prejudicing their deliberations on the fertiliser bomb plot.
The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats have both called for an independent inquiry into the July 7th link. Graham Foulkes, whose son David died in the London bombings, echoed the call, saying an inquiry was needed so "lessons could be learned".