Eleven British Muslims charged with being involved in a plot to blow up U.S.-bound transatlantic airliners have been remanded in custody after appearing in a London court  today.
Eight have been charged with conspiracy to murder and with plotting to detonate homemade explosives on planes after smuggling the components on board while three others were charged with other terrorism-related offences.
A young mother of an eight month old baby and a 17-year-old youth were among the eleven, who appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates Court in central London.

Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Waheed Arafat Khan, Umar Islam, Tanvir Hussain, Assad Ali Sarwar, Adam Khatib, Ibrahim Savant and Waheed Zaman, spoke only to confirm their names and addresses. There was no application for bail and all eight were charged with conspiracy to murder and remanded in custody until September 4 when they will appear at the Old Bailey.

Hussain’s lawyer Mohammed Zed told the court that “all allegations are denied,” while lawyers for the other seven made no comment about a plea.

A 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons was remanded in custody for possessing items useful to a terrorist including a book on home-made bombs and suicide notes while Cossar Ali was remanded for failing to notify the authorities that her husband was planning an act of terrorism.

The two were remanded in custody until August 29 and their lawyers indicated they would plead not guilty. The 11th suspect, Mehran Hussain, was remanded until September 19 for having information about an individual who was planning a terrorist attack. Hussain’s lawyer also indicated he would plead not guilty.
They were: Tanvir Hussain, 25, of no fixed abode; Umar Islam, 28, of east London; Arafat Waheed Khan, 25, from Walthamstow, east London; Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25 from Walthamstow; Ibrahim Savant, 25, from north London; Waheed Zaman, 22, from Walthamstow; Assad Ali Sarwar, 26, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Adam Khatib, 19, from Walthamstow.

They are each charged with one offence of conspiracy to murder contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977.

The second charge is a new offence contrary to Section 5(1) of the Terrorism Act 2006, alleging that they were preparing to smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices on to aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board. The 10 men were all wearing white sweatshirts or t-shirts and grey tracksuit trousers while the woman wore a blue headscarf.

They were flanked by uniformed security guards while they stood in the dock during hearings in a cramped courtroom at Westminster Magistrates Court. Two of the men waved to the public gallery which was packed with friends of the suspects and family members. The 11 were mostly from east London or High Wycombe. U.S. officials have said the plot to use liquid explosives could have caused a disaster on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities that killed nearly 3,000 people.  
Meanwhile, investigators continued the process of poring through hundreds of telephone records and massive quantities of computer storage data in an attempt to draw links between the suspects in Britain and up to 17 in custody in Pakistan.

Authorities for the moment have not identified any co-conspirators within the U.S., but are tracking communications across the Atlantic to identify potential connections, a U.S. diplomat said.

“As is typical, we’re looking at phone calls, visits, any contacts with the United States,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity under standard diplomatic protocol. “To say there are contacts does not mean they are contacts of substance,” he added. “What we have to do is check under every rock, every phone call that we can document. Go out and find out why that call was made, who that call was made to. Quite frankly, it could be nothing, just a friend or a business contact.”

The diplomat said U.S. officials have taken the evidence as a serious potential threat, despite public skepticism in Britain, especially in the Muslim community, about whether any of the suspects could have successfully mixed an on board bomb out of chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide, listed this week among the materials seized by police.

“With some scientific background, some guidance from someone knowledgeable of the chemicals and processes, no, it would not be very difficult,” he said. “And it could be done in a fashion where the [improvised explosive device] could be created and brought on the plane in a fashion that would be very difficult to detect.”
Via:Irish Examiner, latimes

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