A member of a gang of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists plotting attacks on Britain had attempted to buy a radioactive dirty bomb, a prosecutor told a jury trying seven men on terrorism charges on Wednesday.
Salahuddin Amin, 31, contacted an intermediary about the purchase of a radioisotope bomb and was told it could be supplied by Russian mafia criminals based in Belgium, prosecutor David Waters told London's Central Criminal Court.
Waters said Amin had been instructed to carry out negotiations by a man he had met at alleged terrorist training camps in Pakistan.
Amin and six other men are accused of conspiring to cause explosions and had drawn up a long list of potential bombing targets, including Britain's electricity network, one of London's biggest nightclubs and one of the country's largest shopping malls.
Omar Khyam, 24, Anthony Garcia, 24, Nabel Hussain, 20, Jawad Akbar, 22, Waheed Mahmood, 33, Shujah ud Din Mahmood, 19, and Amin, all deny the charge and face life imprisonment if convicted.
Waters said nothing came of the group's interest in a radioisotope bomb and that, in a police interview, Amin said he didn't think it was likely "you can go and pick an atomic bomb up and use it."
Britain's security services and anti-terrorism police put the men under surveillance in February 2004, recording a conversation during which Akbar proposed attacks on "gas, water or electrical supplies," or a large nightclub, Waters told the jury.
"As he [Akbar] put it, `the biggest nightclub in central London, no one can put their hands up and say they are innocent -- those slags [sluts] dancing around,'" Waters told London's Central Criminal Court.
Listening devices recorded Waheed Mahmood suggesting a "little explosion at Bluewater -- tomorrow if you want," referring to the Bluewater shopping mall in Kent, southern England, one of the biggest retail centers in the country.
In a raid on the home of Khyam and his brother, Shujah ud Din Mahmood, police recovered a list of synagogues in London and Manchester, Northern England, which were also potential targets, Waters said.
He said that during a raid on Hussain's flat at Brunel University, in London, police seized CD ROMs which contained detailed plans of Britain's electricity and gas supply network, oil pipelines and high voltage cables.
In any attack on a gas main -- locations of which were on the discs -- the "damage and destruction would be very considerable," Waters said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS