British police on Tuesday charged eight men with conspiracy to commit murder and violations of the Terrorism Act after reportedly finding that two of them possessed surveillance information on financial centers in Washington, New York and New Jersey that were the focus of the terrorism alert early this month in the United States.
The eight men were arrested Aug. 3 and have been held at a high-security police facility in west London. Under the two-week deadline set by the Terrorism Act, the police had until Tuesday to bring charges or release the men.
They were also charged with conspiring to use “radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and explosives” to cause fear, panic and disruption against unspecified targets.
One of the men was charged with possessing a “terrorist’s handbook” on explosives. They are to make a court appearance Wednesday at Belmarsh Prison in southeast London.
A statement issued by Scotland Yard made no assertion that the police had interrupted an active or specific plot against any of the financial centers in the United States, or that the suspects had access to explosives, toxic gases or radioactive materials. A police official said no such material was seized.
But the fact that two of the suspects, arrested two days after the terrorism alert was announced in Washington, were allegedly found in possession of surveillance information on the same five American financial centers that had been the object of that alert alarmed American and British officials.
“The British were very concerned,” a senior European counterterrorism official said. “They have apprehended what they feel is a live cell.” But it remains unclear what if any actions were taken by the alleged cell in preparation for any terrorist act.
Among the eight men was an alleged ranking operative of Al Qaeda whom American law-enforcement officials earlier identified by an alias, Eisa al-Hindi, which means Eisa the Indian. British officials Tuesday said one of the men they were charging, Dhiren Barot, 32, was also known as Eisa al-Hindi and was believed to be a senior Al Qaeda representative in Britain.
Barot is also believed to have conducted surveillance activities in the United States in 2000 and early 2001 under the alias Issa al-Britani, or Issa the Briton, according to the report of the Sept. 11 commission. That surveillance, of targets other than the World Trade Center, was ordered by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the commission report.
The terrorism alert in the United States was elevated after Pakistani authorities made a series of arrests of suspected Al Qaeda militants. Among them was a 25-year-old computer technician, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, in whose possession the police said they found a large and detailed computerized archive of surveillance information on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, the Citigroup tower in Manhattan, the New York Stock Exchange and Prudential Plaza in New Jersey.
Police officials said that while there was an obvious connection between the Pakistan surveillance data on the U.S. financial centers and information seized in Britain, they declined to elaborate on how the pieces of an alleged terrorist puzzle on three continents fit together.
The senior European counterterrorism official acknowledged that Khan’s computerized files helped British authorities identify some of the suspects charged Tuesday.
