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| Home Front: WoT |
| Target Washington? |
| 2005-11-08 |
| Investigators in the United States and Britain are urgently investigating information suggesting that a group of terrorism suspects recently arrested in the London area may have been plotting to blow up Washington landmarks using homemade bombs. Counterterrorism officials, who asked to remain anonymous because the investigation was continuing, said the suspectsâ possible targets included the White House and the U.S. Capitol complex. Investigators appear to be uncertain about how far the plotting against Washington targets had advanced before the arrests. While British officials call the investigation active and urgent, U.S. officials, while acknowledging they were aware of the possible threats against the White House and Capitol Hill, said they were not sure whether the targets were part of an imminent plot or was more bravado among Islamic militants. Officials in both countries are concerned, however, that the suspects could be part of a terror network stretching from the United States to Britain to Bosnia. British authorities are treating the suspects as serious conspirators. According to an official charging document issued on Friday by Scotland Yard, police last month seized a computer hard drive belonging to Younis Tsouli, 22, containing pictures of âa number of places in Washington D.C. including a CRBN vehicle in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that your possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.â Tsouli is also charged with possessing other computerized slides demonstrating how to make a car bomb. (CBRN stands for chemical, radiological, biological or nuclear. The document may have be referring to an anti-WMD vehicle deployed by law enforcement.) Tsouli is also charged with conspiring with Wassem Mughal, 22, also arrested, to cause explosions in Britain and with Tariq al-Daour to commit credit-card fraud. Mughal is charged with having in the bedroom of his home in Chatham, Kent, a town southeast of London, a DVD entitled âMartyrdom Operations Vest,â as well as a document in Arabic entitled âWelcome to Jihadâ and a piece of paper containing the words âHospital=attack,â according to the Scotland Yard document. Mughal is also accused of possessing a document containing a recipe for rocket propellant and âguidance-containing explosion.â While Tsouli and Mughal are both charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion, the only terrorism-related charges faced by the third defendant, Al-Daour, 19, involve financial activity âfor the purposes of terrorism.â British media reports said at least two of the arrested men were naturalized U.K. citizens; other reports said none of the suspects were born in Britain. At an arraignment hearing in London on Friday, the suspects confirmed their identity and had the charges read to them, but did not formally enter pleas to the charges. The identities of their lawyers could not immediately be determined. U.S. counterterrorism officials said they had been aware of the London investigation before todayâs Scotland Yard announcement but were uncertain about how seriously to take the information indicating that the suspects had plotted attacks against the White House and Capitol Hill. One official indicated that the targeting of Washington landmarks could be little more than âjihadist chatter.â Another official said that some of the images of Washington contained on the seized hard drive could be innocent vacation snapshots. Nonetheless, the officials said, appropriate security personnel around Washington had been informed about the threat. Terrance Gainer, chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, told NEWSWEEK: âWe continue to be very, very vigilant up here ⊠We work very closely with all the federal agencies and are fully informed.â Gainer added, however, that his department was ânot concerned about any direct threat or attackâ against the Capitol in the immediate future. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security had no immediate comment. Counterterrorism officials in the United States and the United Kingdom said that the new criminal charges against the London suspects were the result of an elaborate international investigation, codenamed Operation Mazhar by Scotland Yard, into a suspected jihadi network stretching from London to Washington to the Bosnian capitol of Sarajevo. According to the officials, the U.K. suspects are believed to have been in e-mail contact, via Hotmail accounts, with a suspected major jihadi recruiter who used the Internet nom de guerre âMaximus.â According to the officials, Maximus was initially based in Sweden, but then moved to Bosnia, where investigators believe he helped to run a network recruiting disaffected European youth to go to Iraq to join the insurgency. Investigators believe the network engaged in extensive credit-card fraud to finance its activity and raise funds for jihadi groups. Mughal had been residing in an outer suburb of London. Tsouli lives in a run-down apartment building in West London with an older man who neighbors say they believe is his father. A neighbor, Ludmila Mitusova, said the first time she saw Tsouli was during his arrest on Oct. 21: âThere were about 20 policemen who came in with special masks on their faces,â she says, âThe police stayed for two nights at his home.â Al-Daour, the man charged only with financial offenses, last January appeared before London magistrates court charged with racially motivated common assault. He was accused of attacking a 24-year-old Jewish man outside a North London parochial school in late 2004. The case against him was thrown out of court recently because of a lack of evidence. Al-Daour lives in a six-story apartment complex on a busy street near a West London railway station. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Newsweek: salt to taste |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-11-08 10:30 |