Terror suspects in court on plot charges

Eight men will appear in court today accused of plotting terrorist outrages in Britain and the United States.

After being questioned for two weeks at high security Paddington Green police station in London the group was jointly charged with conspiracy to murder.

They were also charged with planning to use radioactive materials, chemicals, toxic gases or conventional explosives in an attack.

The eight will appear before a district judge at Belmarsh magistrates court, next to the high security Belmarsh jail in south-east London.

Their arrests followed intelligence from Pakistan and sparked fears of an attack at Heathrow, although the airport was not specifically mentioned in the charges.

Dhiren Barot, 32, from Willesden, north west London, was charged with having reconnaissance plans “which could have been used as a blueprint for an attack on financial institutions in the United States”.

The plans are alleged to have been for the New York Stock Exchange, Citigroup in New York and the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC.

The buildings were among a string of US financial institutions placed on security alert on August 1, two days before Barot and the others were arrested in Britain in raids by the Anti-Terrorist Branch and MI5.

Barot is also alleged to have been in possession of two notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons and chemicals.

He and Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, also from Willesden, were also charged jointly with having reconnaissance plans of the Prudential Building in New Jersey.

Another man, Quaisar Shaffi, 25, also of Willesden, was charged over possession of an extract from the “Terrorist’s Handbook”, a bomb-making guide available on the internet.

The extract was alleged to contain instructions on preparing chemicals and explosives.

Barot, Tarmohammed and Shaffi were jointly charged with plotting to murder and use explosive or toxic devices with five other men.

They were Omar Abdul Rehman, 20, of Bushey, Hertfordshire; Zia Ul Haq, 25, of Paddington, London; Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31, of Luton, Bedfordshire; Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24, of Harrow, Middlesex; and Junade Feroze, of Blackburn, Lancashire.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft said prosecutors there were exploring whether there would be any charges across the Atlantic.

A ninth man, Matthew Philip Monks, 32, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon.

Police had earlier ceased to investigate four others for terrorism offences.

Mudassar Arani, solicitor for seven of the men, claimed they had been psychologically abused through being held in solitary confinement during two weeks of questioning and, in some cases, stopped from reading the Koran.

She also claimed that one of her clients had been hit in the face by police when he was arrested.

Under current rules enshrined in the UK's Terrorism Act, suspects can be held for a maximum of two weeks from the time of arrest, and the men were charged as time ran out.