Terror threat to London uncovered in al-Qaeda raid
By Michael Evans, Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory
timesonline.co.uk
AMERICAN banks in the City of London are being targeted by al-Qaeda operatives, security sources on both sides of the Atlantic said last night.
A “treasure trove” of coded e-mails from the computer of an al-Qaeda suspect captured in Pakistan revealed a plot to bomb key financial institutions in the US and Britain, including the New York Stock Exchange.
The Government responded immediately to the intelligence by convening a session of Cobra, the emergency co-ordinating unit. After the meeting in Whitehall, Scotland Yard sources said that US companies in the City of London and elsewhere had been advised to tighten security.
They included high-profile American institutions, such as Citigroup, which is based in one of the “twin towers” of Canary Wharf, and the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which have headquarters in London, although security sources said that no specific threat had been made against any company in Britain.
The meeting of British intelligence officials, police and senior civil servants at Cobra included David Veness, the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard responsible for counter-terrorism operations and the national police co-ordinator on terrorist investigations.
It underlined the potential seriousness of the intelligence, after the arrest last month of Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old computer engineer. Britain is already on a high terrorist alert, but one senior police source said: “We are keeping in contact with the US and Pakistan intelligence agencies. It’s prudent we look at businesses which have bases and buildings in this country.”
President Bush announced yesterday that he was to appoint a new national intelligence director to co-ordinate all the agencies in the US. The new appointment was among many of the recommendations made by the congressional commission which last month cautioned that the US was still not safe from terrorists.
New Yorkers made a nervous return to work yesterday after the dramatic warnings that al-Qaeda was plotting to bomb some of their city’s best-known buildings.
Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security Secretary, said that there was no indication when attacks might be attempted but he warned they could come at any time in the next three months, before November’s presidential poll.
He said that buildings specified in the intelligence included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange; Citigroup CN buildings in New York and the Prudential building in Newark, New Jersey.
Police shut several streets in Manhattan yesterday and banned trucks from bridges and tunnels leading to the heart of the financial sector in Wall Street.
In a deliberate show of defiance, Michael Bloomberg, the New York Mayor, and George Pataki, the state Governor, rang the opening bell at the stock exchange where shares rallied after early panic that oil prices might rise to a record level. The gesture came as New York readied itself for a massive security clampdown for the Republican national convention in late August, when the party will nominate President Bush as its candidate for the November election.
In Washington, police closely scrutinised everyone filing into the World Bank headquarters. Guards at the International Monetary Fund checked the underside of cars.
Mr Khan, a Karachi University graduate, was allegedly sent coded orders from Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders which he then encrypted and passed on electronically to the organisation’s agents in countries such as Britain and the US. The computer engineer was arrested on July 13 carrying fake identity documents.
The son of a Pakistan International Airlines executive, he has been a frequent visitor to the UK and travelled regularly to both Germany and the US. Pakistani officials said that during his travels, Mr Khan, who uses the alias Abu Talha among others, was suspected of helping to evaluate likely targets for attack in these countries.
Well-educated with “a flawless English accent”, he reportedly trained at an al-Qaeda terror camp in Afghanistan where he would have met senior leaders from the terrorist organisation. Described as tall and muscular, he allegedly sent the orders to their recipients via a maze of electronic addresses in Turkey, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Pakistani police also found al-Qaeda plans on the computer of another suspect, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was arrested on July 25 after a gun battle in the eastern city of Gujrat. Mr Ghailani is wanted for the 1998 attack on two US embassies in East Africa. Officials in the US last night described the reconnaissance information that had been uncovered as “chilling”.
The sections on targeted buildings include details on their construction, floor plans of meeting rooms, the configuration of parking garages and even the incline of underground entrances.
The coded messages also focus on traffic patterns, possible escape routes and details about security guards — their number, shift changes and whether they are armed — as well as discussions about what kind of explosive could do most damage to each of the buildings mentioned. |
