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July 15, 2008
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Tuesday
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Rajab 11, 1429
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Transatlantic flights plot accused plead guilty
By M. Ziauddin
LONDON, July 14: Three men, two of them presumably of Pakistani origin, accused of plotting a series of terrorist attacks on transatlantic jets admitted on Monday conspiracy to cause explosions but denied conspiracy to murder.
Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, admitted the offence at Woolwich Crown court in south-east London.
The three are on trial with five other defendants, charged with conspiring to murder thousands of people by smuggling home-made liquid bombs onto passenger jets.
The men also admitted to having conspired to cause a public nuisance by distributing videos threatening suicide bomb attacks in Britain. However, the three did not admit conspiracy to murder.
Two of their co-defendants, Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30, who is also known as Brian Young, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause a public nuisance.
The other three defendants are Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Mohammed Gulzar, 26, all presumably of Pakistani origin.
The accused deny two charges of conspiracy to murder between January 1 and August 11, 2006.
Prosecutors claim the eight men planned to disguise powerful explosives as soft drinks to bypass airport security and board passenger jets flying from Heathrow to big cities in North America.
At the time of their arrest on August 10, 2006, two Pakistan officials were quoted by British media as saying their country’s intelligence helped British security agencies crack the plot after a militant was arrested near Pakistan-Afghan border.
Another person, Rashid Rauf, a dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan, was arrested in Bhawalpur in connection with the same transatlantic aircraft plot in August 2006, a day before some arrests were made in Britain.
In December 2006, the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities, and his charges were downgraded to forgery and possession of explosives. In November 2007, he escaped from the custody of Pakistani police.
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