Author: ENS & Agencies
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 12, 2006
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/10415.html
Introduction: Arrests in Pak provided vital
clues; most held are young men of Pakistani origin
A 23-year-old employee of Jet Airways at Heathrow
is one of the 24 people arrested in connection with the planned air terror
attack which was foiled on Thursday.
Sources said Asmin Amin Tariq was employed
as an ancillary security staff with Jet Airways at their London office. He
is a British national of Asian origin who used to work with GS (Group Securitas)
4 until March when a British law required all airlines to permanently employ
all their security staff. Tariq was taken in as a permanent employee in March.
Jet's Executive Director Saroj Datta said,
''We are trying to get more information about him. All employees of Jet in
the UK are cleared by police and security agencies there.''
Tariq and Waheed Zaman, a biochemistry student,
were arrested near Walthamstow dog track after a car chase.
Security officials said the suspected terrorists
had plotted to blow up 10 US-bound planes by mixing a British sports drink
with a gel-like substance and hoping to stage a practice run followed by actual
attacks within days.
The 24 suspects, all Muslims and aged between
17 and 35, were being questioned at Paddington High Security police station
in West London. Most of them are of Pakistani origin and three of them are
converts.
They include Umar Islam, 28, from High Wycombe,
who was born Brian Young, and Abdul Waheed, 21, from High Wycombe, formerly
known as Don Stewart-Whyte, who is believed to be the son of a former Conservative
constituency agent. British authorities froze assets today belonging to 19
of the 24 suspected terrorists and released their names. Tariq is one of them.
The tentacles of the plot to bomb airliners
headed for the US, British officials said, stretched from the suburbs of London
and Birmingham to Pakistan.
"Those arrested are innocent until proven
guilty," said Mohammed Shoyaib Nergat, the imam of a mosque in Walthamstow,
east London, where many of the detainees prayed. The precise sequence of events
leading to the arrests in Britain remained unclear. Pakistani officials said
today that one of the arrested Britons was identified as Rashid Rauf. His
brother Tayib Rauf was arrested on Thursday in Birmingham.
A Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement named
Rauf as a "key person" in the plot. Last night US officials told
reporters that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two
of the alleged ringleaders in Britain, so that they could purchase airline
tickets, The Times reported.
"Pakistan played a very significant role
in breaking this terrorist network," said Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman
for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad. She said the investigation
was continuing and that the total number of people detained might be higher
than seven.
American officials said the plotters in Britain
planned a "dry run," with the real attacks to follow a few days
later. News reports in Britain suggested that the arrests in Pakistan may
have touched off a sequence of events that led officials in Britain to move
ahead quickly with arrests there.
British anti-terror officers staged raids
to arrest the 24 suspects "after it emerged that the plotters might be
ready to strike within 48 hours," The Independent reported.
The Guardian, citing unidentified government
sources, said that after the first two arrests were made in Pakistan a message
was sent to Britain telling the plotters, "Do your attacks now."
That message was intercepted and decoded earlier this week, it said.
Each person would have had a separate component
of the explosive device, which on its own would have seemed harmless had the
person been stopped and examined at security. This could avoid suspicion as
the plotters passed through airport security, and suggests the planning had
allowed for the terrorists being stopped and searched, but not being caught.
Once the planes had taken off, devices could then be assembled.
The sources said the power to detonate the
devices could have come from iPods, laptops or mobile phones. The various
components for the bombs were to be hidden in innocuous items such as soft
drinks.
The Associated Press quoted an American law
enforcement official in Washington as saying that at least one "martyrdom"
tape was found during raids across England on Thursday. Such tapes are often
used by Al Qaeda and some other militant groups, and a number of American
officials have said that the plot bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation.
