ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has arrested at least three men in connection with the foiled attempt to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States, media reports said on Friday.

Two men were arrested from the southern port city of Karachi and the third from the eastern city of Lahore, the private Geo Television reported.

The report did not give other details.

Pakistan said the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners was thwarted after active coordination between Pakistani, British and U.S. intelligence agencies, leading to arrest of 24 people in Britain.

"In fact Pakistan, played a very important role in uncovering and breaking this international terrorist network," Foreign Ministry spokesman Tasnim Aslam said.

"There were some arrests in Pakistan, which were coordinated with the arrests in the U.K.," she said.

The suspects arrested in Britain were British nationals, Aslam said.

Suspected suicide bombers were just days away from simultaneous attacks on aircraft flying from Britain to the United States, in what one British official could have been "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

The plot bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, some security analysts said.

Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in Pakistan or across the border in Afghanistan, and their network has forged links with several Pakistani jihadi groups.

At least two of the British Muslims involved in the bomb attacks on London underground trains and a bus that killed 52 people in July last year had visited Pakistan months earlier, raising suspicions they had ties to militants in the country.

Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda members since joining the U.S.-led global war on terrorism following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

But President Pervez Musharraf's government still has to battle against the country's image as a haven for militancy.

Meanwhile, airports in Pakistan had been put on "high alert" after unearthing of the bomb plot in Britain.

"There is no specific threat but we have tightened security at the airports," an official of the state-run Civil Aviation Authority said.

"The passengers are thoroughly checked particularly their hand baggage," a security official at Islamabad airport said. "The passengers are also being asked to take off their shoes for checking purposes. This has never happened here before."

Source: Scotsman

Alleged plotters questioned

by Lachlan Carmichael in London

August 12, 2006 08:52am

AUTHORITIES in Britain and Pakistan quizzed more than 30 terror suspects overnight as more details emerged of the scale of an alleged Islamist suicide plot to blow up as many as a dozen US-bound planes, possibly within days.

As the air travel chaos caused by the scare eased off, Pakistani officials said they had helped unravel the conspiracy by the arrests last week of seven people, including two Britons of Pakistani origin.

The Pakistani foreign ministry named one of them as Rashid Rauf, and added that there were "indications" of an "Afghanistan-based Al-Qaeda connection".

US reports suggested another five suspects remained at large, after British police hurriedly swooped on 24 people in London and elsewhere late Wednesday and in the early hours of Thursday.

"The threat level is critical, so people should remain vigilant," Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said overnight. "The alleged situation we are dealing with would have been an attack on all of us."

One of the 24 suspects was released late on Friday without charge, as police obtained warrants to hold onto 22 others until next Wednesday. The 23rd individual is to remain in custody until a court hearing Monday.

In Italy, 40 people were arrested in raids Thursday and overnight in various locations "frequented by Islamists," the interior ministry in Rome said.

Newspapers in London cited British government sources saying the operation swung into action overnight Wednesday after a message sent from Pakistan after the arrests there apparently urged the plotters to go ahead.

British Home Secretary John Reid thanked Pakistan by name as well as other partners, while Prime Minister Tony Blair, on holiday in the Caribbean, telephoned his appreciation to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

"This was an operation conducted largely in the United Kingdom and driven from here," Mr Reid said, "but, of course, like many other such operations, it has an international dimension."

In London, the Bank of England froze the accounts of 19 of the suspects arrested in Britain and disclosed their names, virtually all of them Muslim, apparently of Pakistani origin.

US officials say the conspiracy, which they consider the most serious since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, would have seen the perpetrators smuggle seemingly innocuous liquids in drinks bottles or other containers onto US-bound planes from Britain.

Once on board they would be assembled into bombs of liquid explosives.

The Evening Standard newspaper said tickets for United Airlines flights on Friday and next Wednesday were seized during the raids.

US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff suggested that explosives had been recovered at the homes of arrested suspects in Britain, while The Times newspaper said a "martyrdom video", seemingly recorded by a would-be suicide bomber, was found.

News of the plot triggered security alerts, disrupted global air travel and chilled Americans and Britons with raw memories of the September 11 attacks in the United States and the London transport bombings on July 7, 2005.

Although Britain remained on maximum alert for a second day, earlier chaos at domestic and foreign airports eased as airlines introduced bigger planes on some European routes.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Thursday and while airlines began overnight to make up the backlog, passengers were warned of delays and disruption amid heightened security measures, which include a ban on liquids such as shampoos in carry-on hand luggage, as well as electronic equipment.

In Helsinki, the Finnish presidency of the European Union announced plans to convene a meeting of aviation and counter-terrorism experts next week.

US officials estimated up to 10 planes were targeted in an operation they said bore the imprint of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. British media put the range between five and 12 planes.

A US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the alleged plot had targeted United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines flights to New York, Washington and Los Angeles, and possibly other major hubs such as Boston and Chicago.

According to The Washington Post, the first whiff of the alleged plot came after the July 2005 suicide bombings in London when a Muslim tipped off British intelligence about the suspicious activities of an acquaintance.

Fifty-six people died in those attacks, including the four bombers.

Pakistani authorities said the two Britons were seized last week together with five local "facilitators" and provided information that helped to uncover the scheme.

News Limited

Al-Qaeda's UK leader thought to be in custody

Security sources believe that a man arrested in last week's anti-terror raids in Britain is al-Qaeda's leader in the country, a report in Britain's Sunday Times said.

UK Home Office officials say one of those arrested is suspected not only of masterminding the foiled plot to bring down up to nine transatlantic airliners, but also of involvement in other planned atrocities over the past few years, the Times report said.

They believe he was instrumental in sending the ringleader of at least one previous British terror plot for training at a camp in Pakistan last year.

He is described by counter-terrorism officials at Britain's MI5 internal security service as the senior figure in a British terror network involving Kashmiri, North African and Iraqi cells, the Times said.

Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police Service, believes the plot to bring down airliners involved up to 20 terrorists who were planning to smuggle liquid bomb components in hand luggage onto nine British and American passenger jets.

Their targets were planes leaving Heathrow and possibly three other British airports later this month.

The bombs were to be assembled on board by combining peroxide and acid-based substances into liquid explosives. The plan was to explode the devices simultaneously as the planes headed for cities in the United States.

Paul Stephenson, the deputy commissioner of London's Metro-politan Police, said it was a plot "to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale". It is estimated that as many as 3,000 people could have been killed.

The thwarting of the alleged plot has, however, failed to quash continuing fears among UK counter-terrorism experts. Senior security officials have briefed ministers that a "second phase" of attacks may be about to be launched, the Times said.

The Nation