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BREAKING:

3 Charged With Targeting N.Y., N.J. Financial Institutions

UPDATED: 12:13 pm EDT April 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Three men have been indicted on charges they plotted to attack financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington.

A four-count indictment unsealed Tuesday accuses Dhiran Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi of scouting the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp Building in New York, the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the District of Columbia.

The three men, already in custody in England, were charged with three conspiracy counts and providing material support to terrorists.

U.S. officials claim that Barot is a senior al-Qaida figure, known variously as Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani, who scouted prominent financial targets in the United States at the behest of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Prosecutors say the men conducted surveillance on the buildings between August 2000 and April 2001, including video surveillance in Manhattan around April 2001.

Last August the government raised the risk of a terrorist attack to "high" for those specific financial institutions. The color-coded threat level for the rest of the nation remained at yellow, or elevated, the middle of a five-point scale.

Federal authorities, who acknowledged the threat was based mainly on years-old intelligence, said the decision to raise the threat level was based on an abundance of caution and because of the lengthy planning and plotting record of the terrorist network known as al-Qaida.

The threat level was lowered to yellow for the buildings in November.

The men face related charges in England. Barot, 32, was charged there with possessing reconnaissance plans for the U.S. institutions and notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

Tarmohammed, 26, was charged there, along with Barot, with possessing plans of the Prudential building. Shaffi, 25, also was charged in Britain with possessing an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook" on the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.

http://www.wnbc.com/news/4370589/detail.html