Three arrested after London airport scare

THREE people have been arrested at London's Heathrow airport after a security scare on a Dubai-bound Emirates flight, police say, amid reports officers stormed the plane and took the suspects off.

"Three people have been arrested at Heathrow this evening. They are currently in police custody. The airport remains open,'' a statement from London's Metropolitan Police Service said.

Friday evening's alert came amid heightened security at airports around the world following an alleged attempt by a young Nigerian to bomb a plane landing in Detroit on Christmas Day by concealing explosives in his underwear.

Sky News television said police intervened after verbal threats were made and that the men arrested were English and appeared to be drunk.

The broadcaster showed a photograph purportedly of officers in black overalls inside the aircraft, taken by a passenger on the flight.

The passenger, Cameron McLean, told Sky News armed police burst onto the plane before making arrests.

"Some special police just came on the plane and arrested these two guys a few rows in front of me,'' Mr McLean said.

"The police just swarmed the guy and then rushed him out. I think he was a white male. There was another one as well, I didn't see him,'' he said.

One of the men was taken off in handcuffs, Mr McLean said.

The passenger added there were about five armed officers who were wearing helmets, body armour and carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons.

A spokesman for airport operator BAA confirmed a "security incident'' on the plane but said it only affected the Dubai-bound Emirates plane.

The alert came after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, allegedly tried to detonate a device stitched into his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit on Christmas Day.

In a court in Detroit on Friday, he pleaded not guilty to six charges related to the incident, which has led to security being stepped at airports worldwide.

Full-body scanners are to be introduced at Britain's airports and Heathrow - one of the world's busiest air hubs - will be the first to receive the devices before the end of the month, Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said.

The Australian

Daniel Pipes: Mickey Mouse air security

As hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London's Heathrow airport in 1986 comes to mind.

It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland.

While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to "get rid of the thing," he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in "the Holy Land".

He also insisted on their travelling separately.

Murphy, later described by the prosecutor as a "simple, unsophisticated Irish lass and a Catholic," accepted unquestioningly Hindawi's arrangements for her to fly to Israel on El Al on April 17.

She also accepted a wheeled suitcase with a false bottom containing nearly 2kg of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive, and she agreed to be coached by him to answer questions posed by airport security.

Murphy successfully passed through the standard Heathrow security inspection and reached the gate with her bag, where an El Al agent questioned her. As reconstructed by Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy in Washingtonian magazine, he started by asking whether she had packed her bags herself. She replied in the negative. Then:

"What is the purpose of your trip to Israel?" Recalling Hindawi's instructions, Murphy answered, "For a vacation."

"Are you married, Miss Murphy?" "No."

"Travelling alone?" "Yes."

"Is this your first trip abroad?" "Yes."

"Do you have relatives in Israel?" "No."

"Are you going to meet someone in Israel?" "No.

"Has your vacation been planned for a long time?" "No."

"Where will you stay while you're in Israel?" "The Tel Aviv Hilton."

"How much money do you have with you?" "Fifty pounds." The Hilton at that time costing at least pound stg. 70 a night, he asked:

"Do you have a credit card?" "Oh, yes," she replied, showing him an ID for cashing cheques.

That did it, and the agent sent her bag for additional inspection, where the bombing apparatus was discovered.

Had El Al followed the usual Western security procedures, 375 lives would surely have been lost somewhere over Austria.

The bombing plot came to light, in other words, through a non-technical intervention, relying on conversation, perception, common sense, and (yes) profiling.

The agent focused on the passenger, not the weaponry. Israeli counter-terrorism takes passengers' identities into account; accordingly, Arabs endure an especially tough inspection.

"In Israel, security comes first," David Harris of the American Jewish Committee explains.

Obvious as this sounds, over-confidence, political correctness, and legal liability render such an approach impossible anywhere else in the West.

In the US, for example, one month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalising "about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity." (Wear a hijab, I semi-jokingly advise women wanting to avoid secondary screening at airport security.)

Worse yet, consider the panicky Mickey-Mouse and embarrassing steps the US Transportation Security Administration implemented hours after the Detroit bombing attempt: no crew announcements "concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks," and disabling all passenger communications services. During a flight's final hour, passengers may not stand up, access carry-on baggage, nor "have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap".

Some crews went yet further, keeping cabin lights on throughout the night while turning off the in-flight entertainment, prohibiting all electronic devices, and, during the final hour, requiring passengers to keep hands visible and neither eat nor drink.

Things got so bad, the Associated Press reports, "A demand by one flight attendant that no one could read anything elicited gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter."

Widely criticised for these Clousseau-like measures, TSA eventually decided to add "enhanced screening" for travellers passing through or originating from 14 "countries of interest" as though one's choice of departure airport indicates a propensity for suicide bombing.

The TSA engages in "security theatre" bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion. The alternative approach is Israelification, defined by Toronto's Star newspaper as "a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death".

Which do we want, theatrics or safety?

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org ) director of the Middle East Forum and Taube fellow at the Hoover Institution, has super-elite status at two airlines.

The Australian

Airline bomb plot leader to serve minimum of 40 years in jail

The ringleader of a plot to put liquid bombs on transatlantic airliners was jailed for life with a minimum of 40 years today for planning what the judge said was an atrocity comparable with the September 11 attacks.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, a British-born extremist, planned to detonate home-made liquid bombs on board flights bound for major North American cities, Woolwich Crown Court in South London heard.

Ali, of Walthamstow, East London, was found guilty along with Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain of conspiracy to murder on a mass scale by detonating bombs on airliners following the largest-ever counter-terrorism operation in the UK.

Sarwar was jailed for life with a minimum of 36 years and Hussain told that he would have to spend at least 32 years in jail.

Mr Justice Henriques, the trial judge, said that the gang was guilty of "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 said.

He added that the plans had "reached an advanced stage in its development" and the men had "sufficient chemicals for 20 home-made detonators of commercial strength".

"I’m satisfied that there is every likelihood that this plot would have succeeded but for the intervention of the police and the security service."

Referring to a video of a mock explosion on board an airliner, Mr Justice Henriques said: "I could only conclude the chance of an aircraft surviving such an explosion at altitude was remote. Had this conspiracy not been interrupted, a massive loss of life would almost certainly have resulted - and if the detonation was over land, the number of victims would have been even greater still."

The judge said the e-mails at the centre of the retrial - which were unavailable to prosecutors in the first trial last year - were "a vital source of information as to the control, progress and scope of this conspiracy".

Read more here,,,,

Source: Times Online

Retrials in trans-Atlantic bomb plot

From correspondents in the UK

ENGLAND'S public prosecutor says he'll seek a retrial of three men accused of involvement in a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners, following a hung jury in their court case.

The defendants are to face a third trial on the charge of conspiracy to murder, the Crown Prosecution Service said, believing it was in the public interest and there remained a realistic prospect of conviction.

Three other men were found guilty on Monday of plotting to blow up at least seven trans-Atlantic airliners using liquid explosives, which prosecutors said would have been a "terrorist event of global proportions".

The plot, foiled in 2006, triggered wide-ranging new rules on carrying liquids on commercial aircraft.

"I have concluded that, in this exceptional case, it is in the public interest to seek a further retrial," director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer said.

The three men facing a retrial are Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Waheed Zaman.

"I am satisfied that, notwithstanding the failure of two juries to agree a verdict, there remains a realistic prospect of a conviction against each defendant on the charge of conspiracy to murder," the statement said.

Explaining the unusual move of seeking a third trial, Starmer described the practice for prosecutors to offer no evidence against a defendant if two previous juries have been unable to agree as "no more than convention".

"I do not consider that it would be oppressive or unjust to seek a further retrial," he added.

At Monday's trial, ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali was found guilty of conspiring to murder thousands in the plot.

Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar were found guilty of the same charges of plotting to carry out bombings on aircraft flying from London's Heathrow airport to cities in the United States and Canada.

Source: The Australian

Three guilty of UK plane bomb plot

Three Britons have been found guilty of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up transatlantic airliners bound for North America.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, were convicted on Monday of conspiring to detonate bombs hidden in soft drink bottles in mid-flight suicide attacks.

The bombers intended to simultaneously destroy at least seven planes carrying over 200 passengers each between London's Heathrow airport and the United States and Canada in August 2006, prosecutors said.

The suspected al-Qaeda plot led to a tight of security restrictions worldwide on the amount of liquids passengers could take on board aircraft.

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.

The conspirators were caught just days from putting the plan into operation following the largest surveillance operation of its kind being carried out by British police.

"If they had been successfully deployed, they would have killed thousands of people on board and maybe more if they had detonated them over land," said a senior British police source, speaking on condition on anonymity.

Read more here,,,

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

Air plot a "hoax" according to London based Muslim academic

Azzam Tamini of the "Muslim Association" claims that the plot by three British Muslims who admitted to attempting to bomb Heathrow and the House of Commons with liquid explosives was indeed a "hoax" and the reason for this judgement was his distrust of ISI the Pakistani intelligence services.

Azzam Tamini of the Institute of Islamic Thought has said that "each reaction will cause an action" speaking to CNBC and highlighted the British born miltiant Islamic movement at play which still concerns the US and British intelligence community. Watch the video.

Source: The London Daily News

Afghan hijacker 'working at Heathrow'

An Afghan hijacker who forced an airliner to fly to Britain is now working at Heathrow, it has been disclosed.

Nazamuddin Mohammidy, 34, was one of a gang of nine that threatened to blow up an internal flight in Afghanistan, along with 173 passengers and crew, unless they were granted political asylum. Read more ...

Source: Telegraph

The Lyrical Terrorist

An airport worker who wrote poems about beheadings is the first woman to be found guilty under new terror laws.

Samina Malik, who liked to call herself a "lyrical terrorist", called for attacks on the West and described "poisoned bullets" capable of killing an entire street in her poetry.

The 23-year-old Muslim wrote of her desire to become a martyr and listed her favourite videos as the "beheading ones".

Described as a "committed Islamic extremist", Malik, a shop assistant at Heathrow, hoarded an extensive collection of terrorism manuals, the Old Bailey heard.

She was a member of an extremist group linked to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a hate preacher who fled to Lebanon from Britain two years ago.

Yesterday a jury found her guilty of possessing documents likely to be used for terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, by a majority of ten to one, after deliberating for 19 hours.

Malik, who wore a black head scarf, wept as the verdict was read out.

Earlier she was cleared of the more serious offence of having articles for a terrorist purpose.

Judge Peter Beaumont told Malik that she was an enigma.

He granted her bail which amounted to a house arrest. But he warned her a custodial sentence was inevitable.

Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, told the court the defendant liked to be known as the "lyrical terrorist" or "a stranger awaiting martyrdom".

"She is a committed Islamic extremist, who supports terrorism and terrorists.

"She had a library of material that she had collected for terrorist purposes.

"That collection would be extremely useful for someone planning terrorist activity."

The court heard how police raided her home in Southall, West London, after an email from her was found on the computer of a terror suspect in October last year.

She had a profile on the social networking website Hi-5, where she called for the execution of "depraved" Westerners .

The British-born Muslim listed her interests as helping the Mujahideen "in any way I can".

She also wrote of how she enjoyed video messages from Osama Bin Laden and "videos that showed massacres of the kuffars", or non-Muslims.

In one poem, called The Living Martyrs, she called for Muslims to rise up against the infidels.

In another, How To Behead, she warned that the victim should be bound and blindfolded.

Malik, who worked as a shop assistant airside in a branch of WHSmith at the airport, also owned an Al Qaeda encyclopaedia of Jihad, a Mujahideen poison handbook and a 'terrorist handbook' which explained how to make bombs.

On the hard drive of her computer police found a copy of a sniper rifle manual, a firearms manual, anti-tank weaponry, a document entitled How To Win Hand To Hand Fighting, and pictures of weapons.

Outside the court, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: "Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the internet.

"She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group. She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material which could have been useful to terrorists.

"Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence."

Malik is due to be sentenced on December 6.