Two arrested amid US missile plot fears

Two senior members of a mosque were reportedly arrested in the United States today on suspicion of plotting to buy shoulder-held missiles.

The men were held after a raid in Albany, New York, following a long FBI operation, according to CBS News.

They were named as the mosque’s Imam, Yassim Muhhidin Aref, aged 34, and its founder Mohammed Mosharref Hoosain, aged 49.

The FBI believes the men are connected to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, CBS said.

It is alleged that they were attempting to launder money to purchase shoulder-launching missiles.

Armed police sealed off the area around the Majid Al Salam mosque as the men were arrested.

The FBI operation was said to have been ongoing for some time. It is understood that agents decided to act because one of the men may have been about to leave the country.

There is no link between the arrests and the current increased terror threat against financial targets in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey.

The arrests came amid growing fears that al-Qaida is planning a new attack on the US.

Pakistan-based terrorists recently made contact with possible sleeper cells in the US, two senior US government officials told CNN yesterday.

Evidence of the communication between Pakistan and the US was found during a raid on al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan last month.

Pakistani intelligence officials told the news network that as many as six individuals in the US were recently contacted by an al-Qaida suspect they arrested last month.

The arrest of that suspect, computer programmer Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, aged 25, also led to the discovery of computer files which suggested key financial buildings in the US were being targeted.

It is not clear how the communication between al-Qaida members in Pakistan and their contact in the US was made. Nor has it been revealed what information was communicated.

But the intelligence has led US security officials to launch investigations into whether sleeper cells are plotting an attack.

The news frayed nerves even further in a country which has seen more heavily armed police officers put on guard around high-profile buildings, including the Stock Exchange in New York, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington.

The computer files seized in Pakistan contained information about the layout of the buildings, traffic and pedestrian flow around them and details of their security measures.

There was also information on what types of buildings would collapse in an explosion, and details of hospitals, fire stations and police headquarters around potential targets.

Much of the information, gathered in apparent al-Qaida surveillance operations, was several years old, officials admitted. But the White House hit back at suggestions that it was irrelevant.

“I think it’s wrong and plainly irresponsible to suggest that it was based on old information,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Unnamed senior government officials told the New York Times yesterday that there was additional intelligence pointing to a current threat of a terrorist attack on financial targets in New York and possibly in Washington.

And a senior intelligence official told the newspaper that there was “very current and recent activity on the part of al-Qaida”.

The official said he was in little doubt that “al-Qaida is moving toward the execution stage of attacks here in the homeland”.

One official said on Tuesday that an intelligence report had pointed to a possible attack “in August or September”.

The author of the reports found on the computer disks was “obviously someone who has lived an extensive period of time in the West, exceptionally professional, exceptionally meticulous”, an intelligence official told the New York Times.

“Anyone who thinks that these terrorists are a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, if 9/11 didn’t convince them, these case reports would convince them.”

Among the files was a picture of another prominent US building, the name and location of which officials would not disclose.

The US government has warned recently that al-Qaida hoped to hit the US “hard” in the weeks before the November 2 presidential election.