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21. august 2006
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Eleven suspected terrorists have been charged in the UK over the plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Eight of those have been charged with conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism.
Two are accused of failing to disclose information and a 17-year-old faces a charge of possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism.
One woman has been freed without charge and eleven people remain in custody, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Susan Hemming, head of the CPS counter terrorism division, said the alleged plot was to "manufacture and smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices on to aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board".
Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25, Arafat Waheed Khan, 25, Adam Khatib, 19, Ibrahim Savant, 25, and Waheed Zaman, 22, all from Walthamstow, are charged with conspiracy to murder and with preparing acts of terrorism under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006.
By the names, they sound like more of those dangerous Episcopalians again. Not that I'd want to profile anyone...
 Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke (picture) laid out the charges and provided some details of the charges and the scale of the ongoing investigation:
What I can give is an indication of the type of evidence that will be presented in support of the prosecution.
First, there is evidence from surveillance carried out before 10th August. This includes important, indeed, highly significant video and audio recordings.
I can also tell you that since 10th August we have found bomb making equipment. There are chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, electrical components, documents and other items.
We have also found a number of video recordings - these are sometimes referred to as martyrdom videos. This has all given us a clearer picture of the alleged plot.
However, the investigation is far from complete.
The scale is immense. Enquiries will span the globe.
Hot Air has the video from the press conference. There is also a well-deserved sarcastic swipe here:
I don’t get it. Lieberman’s polling well at the moment; what is it, precisely, that Bush and Blair are trying to distract us from by announcing this?
The idea that the US and British governments are in positions to get thousands of law enforcement officers stage a terror sweep for domestic purposes is dangerously close to a wacky conspiracy theory. We live in very crazy times.
10:33:13 PM 
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Iran's official answer to the UN demands to halt its enrichment programme is due tomorrow Tuesday, but we already got the answer.
Iran has turned away U.N. inspectors wanting to examine its underground nuclear site in an apparent violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, diplomats and U.N. officials said Monday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the information, told The Associated Press that Iran's unprecedented refusal to allow access to the facility at Natanz could seriously hamper international efforts to ensure that Tehran is not trying to make nuclear weapons.
In fact, the ruler of Iran has stated that Iran will continue the nuclear programme.
Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has said his country will press ahead with its nuclear programme.
He was speaking a day before Tehran is scheduled to give its formal answer to an international proposal of incentives for Iran to halt uranium enrichment.
Iran had "made its own decision" and would "continue its path", state television quoted the leader as saying.
Iran's leaders are either confident that Russia and China will block any Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions that could really hurt it, or they don't care. Iran will also be emboldened by Hezbollah fighting Israel to a stalemate in Lebanon, and knowing the Bush administration is too weak politically to launch any military strikes.
It now appears all but certain that Iran will go nuclear, with dramatic consequences for the Middle East power balance and total loss of prestige for the west. Not to mention the maybe remote, but totally devastating possibility that Iran is actually going to attack Israel with nuclear weapons once it has acquired them.
9:40:38 PM
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British Labour MP Shahid Malik tells fellow Muslims that if they want sharia law, they should pack their bags and move to Saudi Arabia.
Last Tuesday, after a 90-minute meeting with John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, to discuss the challenges of extremism and foreign policy, I emerged and was immediately asked by the media whether I agreed that what British Muslims needed were Islamic holidays and sharia (Islamic law). I thought I had walked into some parallel universe.
Sadly this was not a joke. These issues had apparently formed part of the discussion the day before between Prescott, Ruth Kelly, the communities minister, and a selection of “Muslim leaders”. I realised then that it wasn’t me and the media who were living in a parallel universe — although certain “Muslim leaders” might well be.
Maybe some of these “leaders” believed that cabinet ministers were being alarmist, that the terror threat posed by British extremists was exaggerated. Maybe they thought that the entire plot and threat were the “mother of all smokescreens”, a bid to divert our attention from the killing fields of Lebanon. Or maybe it was another symptom of that epidemic that is afflicting far too many Muslims: denial. Out of touch with reality, frightened to propose any real solutions for fear of “selling out”, but always keen to exact a concession — a sad but too often true caricature of some so-called Muslim leaders. [...]
As I have repeatedly said, in this world of indiscriminate terrorist bombings, where Muslims are just as likely to be the victims of terrorism as other British and US citizens, we Muslims have an equal stake in fighting extremism. Hundreds of Muslims died on 9/11 and 7/7. But more importantly, given that these acts are carried out in the name of our religion — Islam — we have a greater responsibility not merely to condemn but to confront the extremists. In addition to being the targets of terrorism, Muslims will inevitably be the targets of any backlash.
It is a genuine problem that in the name of integration, European governments have chosen to talk to Muslims through Islamic religious teachers, pleading for greater integration through the very people who has the most to lose by integration being successful. That is not a formula for success.
2:15:02 PM
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Through the United Nations, advanced British night-vision equipment sent to Iran was used by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
-- Israeli intelligence officials have complained to Britain and the United States that sensitive night-vision equipment recovered from Hezbollah fighters during the war in Lebanon had been exported by Britain to Iran. British officials said the equipment had been intended for use in a U.N. anti-narcotics campaign.
Israeli officials say they believe the state-of-the-art equipment, found in Hezbollah command-and-control headquarters in southern Lebanon during the just-concluded war, was part of a British government-approved shipment of 250 pieces of night-vision equipment sent to Iran in 2003.
Israeli military intelligence confirmed that one of the pieces of equipment is a Thermo-vision 1000 LR tactical night-vision system, serial No. 155010, part No. 193960, manufactured by Agema, a high-tech equipment company with branches in Bedfordshire, England, and San Diego. A spokesman for Agema in San Diego denied all knowledge of the system.
The equipment, which needed special export-license approval from the British government, was passed to the Iranians through a program run and administered by the U.N. Drug Control Program. The equipment uses infrared imaging to provide nighttime surveillance that allows the user to detect people and vehicles moving in the dark at a range of several miles.
It is incredibly naive to supply the Iranians with advanced military technology, believing they will only use it for the stated purpose.
3:06:36 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.09.2006; 05:01:29.
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