Transatlantic bomb plot: 3 British Muslims convicted

George Bush's administration was so anxious about the August 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic that it ordered a plane to be turned back in midair just two days before the plot was averted by British police, fearing a terror suspect was on board.

The former head of US Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said yesterday that the Americans took the threat so seriously that President Bush was given constant updates on the police surveillance of a London council flat being used as a "factory' to make liquid bombs.

"This stood out as being of a very substantial dimension, advanced, specific and sophisticated and of a scale comparable to 9/11," Chertoff told the Guardian.

The high anxiety in Washington was revealed after the landmark conviction yesterday of three British nationals found guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating liquid bombs on at least seven airliners flying from the UK to the United States.

The three men - Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar (above, from left) and Tanvir Hussain - were arrested in August 2006 along with five others just two days before it was feared they planned to stage a dry run of the plot.

All three had been convicted of conspiracy to murder when they were tried last year. But the first jury stopped short of concluding that they had targeted planes. After a lengthy retrial, Scotland Yard yesterday got what they desperately wanted - convictions for targeting planes.

WHAT WAS THE PLOT?
The terrorists, based in east London and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, planned a mass suicide mission in which they would board planes carrying liquid explosives which they planned to detonate over the Atlantic.

The liquid explosives would be contained in empty bottles of Lucozade and Oasis, the liquid being coloured to match the original contents.

The bottles and the batteries and detonators would all be carried on board separately, thus enabling the bombers to get through security.

British scientists who constructed versions of the liquid bombs have concluded that if the terrorists had succeeded in getting on board, the explosions would have been severe enough to punch a hole in the aircraft's skin.WHAT FLIGHTS WERE THREATENED?
The following seven flights, all flying out of Heathrow Terminal 3, are known to have been targeted:
Air Canada 865 to Montreal
Air Canada 849 to Toronto
American Airlines 139 to New York
American Airlines 925 to Washington DC
American Airlines 91 to Chicago
United Airlines 959 to Chicago
United Airlines 931 to San Francisco

WHO WAS THE MASTERMIND?
Birmingham-born Rashid Rauf. His arrest in Pakistan, at the urgent request of the Americans, forced British police to bring their own arrests of the UK cell forward. They feared that if bombers learned of Rauf's arrest they would either try to escape or rush their planned attack into action.

Rauf was the terrorists' link to al-Qaeda, who provided technical know-how to the bomb makers. He was referred to by the codename 'Paps' or 'Papa' in progress reports sent to Pakistan by email from Abdullah Ali and Assad Sarwar.

After his arrest in August 2006, Rauf was in custody for more than a year. But he escaped from police when he was taken to court in Islamabad for an extradition hearing. He is thought to have been killed in Pakistan last November by a US drone, though this has never been confirmed.

WHAT MADE THEM DO IT?
Videos made by two of the convicted men, designed to be left behind to explain their actions after their intended deaths aboard the airliners, show them to be motivated by rage at British and American foreign policy following 9/11.

In one video, Abdullah Ahmed Ali warned of "body parts... decorating the streets" if Muslims were not left alone. He said he had yearned to take part in violent jihad since he was a teenager. "Taste that which you have made us [Muslims] taste for a long time," he said to the camera, operated by his fellow conspirator Tanvir Hussein.

John McDowall, head of Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command, said the convicted men intended to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale. They intended to cause carnage through a series of co-ordinated explosions and bring terror into the lives of people around the globe. Apart from massive loss of life, these attacks would have had enormous worldwide economic and political consequences." ·