Airline Bomb Plot

Looks as if the UK authorities have acted, they want to extradite Rashid Rauf from Pakistan. Not for the bomb plot or anything, but for a murder he is alleged to have committed in 2002.
Read more here

No big fuckin suprise there!!Tony Blair is insane as are the brown noses who follow the nut.
Glad I don´t stay in the UK anymore.The people get the government they deserve.Still the "terror" scare did make the headlines a wee bit more exciting,just for a spell.

The article is now available here.

Is this REAL? Can someone SCAN an image of the IHT article and post please. The Natta, et. al. article in the NYT does not say the same as is claimed of the allegedly "not available on the web" IHT article.

Slate has something from the NYT as part of its news roundup, including the intruiging:

The story seems to more-or-less parallels the IHT one. In fact:

Well, that's what quite a few people said at the time. Funny how it's perfectly OK for senior policemen (off the record) and senior politicians (very much on the record) to hyperventilate about hypothetical mass murder but as soon as evidence starts to emerge that it might not quite be all it was cracked up to be, it's prejudicial and we should all shut up.

I made the post by typing out extracts from a paper copy of the IHT. I velieve that the Toronto Star article is a trimmed down version of what I saw, indeed many of the quotes are exactly the same.

One I nearly missed, from the Telegraph:

Rather Kafkaesque.
"You're charged with failing to disclose information about your brother"
"What did he do?"
"We're not sure yet"

If that's what he's actually charged with, the scope of the offence is quite limited. It's specific to the sections of the Act dealing with terrorist funding and money laundering and

'applies where a person-
(a) believes or suspects that another person has committed an offence under any of sections 15 to 18, and
(b) bases his belief or suspicion on information which comes to his attention in the course of a trade, profession, business or employment.'

I can see how someone could be charged with failure to disclose information when no one's charged with an offence relating to the information that wasn't disclosed -- X tells Y that he wants him to help conceal some funds belonging to 'the cause' but it can't be proved they were, in fact, in any way related to, or intended for, terrorism or that they belonged to any sinister organisation. But in this case the brother who's been accused would have had to be acting for the other brother in some sort of professional capacity, wouldn't he?

I dunno. Can any lawyers help us?

Good spot - my pet lawyer is out of the country at the moment, so I can't ask him. It's a thought-crime anyway, which is one reason it's silly. It isn't quite so catch-all as the more recent Acts, which would probably have included something daft like 'coming by the information in the course of any human activity from breathing upwards'.

One other thing that's come to my attention - I said in a previous post/comment that Gareth Peirce wasn't involved - she is now, and she has a good record of acting for the innocent/framed in terrorism cases, according to w*k*pedia:

The NYT article is now online here.

I'm afraid it isn't there any more:

Whole Lotta Hyperventilatin' Goin' On -

In case the Toronto Star article is also suppressed, I took screenshots and post the text here:

NEW FACTS EMERGE IN TERROR PLOT
Seven `martyrdom' videos uncovered
Suspects not ready for immediate strike
Aug. 28, 2006. 12:00 AM
DON VAN NATTA, ELAINE SCIOLINO AND STEPHEN GREY
NEW YORK TIMES

LONDON—On Aug. 9, in a small apartment in east London, two young Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their suicide plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and their "accomplices," Britain and the Jews.

"As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed," said one of the men on a "martyrdom" videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be "pleased with us and accepts our deed."

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in many countries, barred passengers from taking liquids on planes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack. Those details include evidence of computer searches for airline schedules, receipts for cash transfers from abroad and a handwritten diary that appeared to sketch out elements of a plan.

At the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.

The suspects had been working for months out of an apartment that investigators called the "bomb factory," where the police watched as the suspects experimented with chemicals, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In searches during raids, the police discovered what they said were the necessary components to make a highly volatile liquid explosive known as HMTD, jihadist materials, receipts of Western Union money transfers, seven martyrdom videos made by six suspects, and the last will and testament of a would-be bomber, senior British officials said.

Hours after police arrested the 21 suspects, officials said the suspects had intended to carry out the deadliest terror attack since Sept. 11.

Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was "mass murder on an unimaginable scale." Some officials on the first day estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, described the plot as "getting really quite close to the execution stage."

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two suspects did not have passports and one official said the suspected leaders were still recruiting would-be bombers.

The suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was found five days after the arrests buried under leaves in the woods near High Wycombe, northwest of London.

Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two-and-a-half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks, or how many planes were to be involved.

They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated. In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged police were still investigating "the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be attacked."

A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the suspected plot, of whom 12 have been charged. Eight people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Three people were charged with failing to disclose information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old youth was charged with possession of articles that could be used to prepare a terrorist act. Eight people still in custody have not been charged. Five have been released. All are British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35.

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of a critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, "in theory is dangerous," but whether the suspects "had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen."

While experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some statements made at the time.

"In retrospect," said Michael Sheehan, former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in New York, "there may have been too much hyperventilating going on."

"On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."

It seems that this particular interpretation of the law doesn't apply to the Daily Mail:

Video chant of terror suspect: 'As you kill, you will be killed'

They're probably hoping that as the trial will be some time off, any possible prejudicial influence that the Mail has on the case will have been forgotten.

Here are the 4 pages from the NYT article.

http://rapidshare.de/files/31168421/nyt.zip.html

Incidentally, HMTD is a solid, not a liquid explosive, and cannot be brewed up in an aeroplane toilet using baby milk and hair gel.

If you are using Google Web Accelerator you can get to it as it's cached there (No IP restriction ther as yet).

Handy tool.

Other proxy methods may allow you to get to it as well.

Bomb News:

1) Google for HMTD (if you're not scared of having your door bust down)
2) Pick the first link
3) Read it

Seems pretty clear to me that it's not the ideal explosive to carry around and certainly can't be made on a plane (8-24 hours plus drying time). It's not a liquid, but requires liquids to make (water and H202).

The article has been reprinted at http://www.creative-designs.net/?p=14c, which appears to be available to UK servers.

how to make HTMD

Not easy in the aircraft loo...

No, it is not!
"On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."
Some interesting kind of censorship for international (or even national) publications.
Has this article been blackened with the printed edition available in the UK?

The Guardian today states that the entire shipment to the UK of that issue of the NYT is cancelled. If anyone knows otherwise, then do say.

The link to the NYT that I posted before, to this page now works for me (I'm UK based).

It worked for me when I first posted the link, but not the next day.

Alternatively, with any similar embargo in the future use www.nodeproxy.com - a proxy server based in the USA.

The on/off nature of this is surprising - does anyone else have any idea what's going on here?

I would suspect it's the NYT legal dept saying 'try harder, the block's not working'.

We found that none of the NYT links or the google links worked.

This works:
http://www.creative-designs.net/?p=14

We have copied the content and in the interests of stamping out political censorship of the web we will publish this on an off-shore server should the article become unavailable.

Wooster's rapidshare link posted above still works:

http://rapidshare.de/files/31168421/nyt.zip.html

Use torpark (Firefox configured to connect using the ultra-anonymous tor network). It's easy to use and completely anonymous.

here is the address http://torpark.nfshost.com/