Posted on 07/16/2005 2:16:58 PM PDT by Clive
British authorities are investigating a possible link between the London bombings and an alleged London bomb plot last year involving Canadian Momin Khawaja, now awaiting the first-ever trial under Canada's new anti-terrorism act.
British investigators and security intelligence sources in Europe and the United States say Mohamed Sidique Khan, a 30-year-old primary school teacher believed to be a key figure among the four suspected London suicide bombers, was possibly associated with some of the men arrested in and around the British capital in March, 2004.
As part of a global investigation dubbed Operation Crevice, British police and security agents say they foiled a plan by a suspected Pakistan-based al-Qaeda group, allegedly including Mr. Khawaja, to detonate ammonium nitrate fertilizer bombs in shopping malls and other public places.
A day before the British suspects were arrested, Mr. Khawaja was arrested by the RCMP at Ottawa's Department of Foreign Affairs, where he worked as a software developer for a contract computer firm.
The 26-year-old Canadian of Pakistani descent, who lived in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, had travelled to London for a few days in February, 2004.
Investigators are now looking into a possible family connection between Khan, believed to have died in one of the four London blasts, and Omar Khyam Khan, 22, and the other Operation Crevice suspects.
Police also are investigating whether Khan's fellow bombers also had contact with the Operation Crevice group and therefore might have come under the scrutiny of British security forces earlier on.
British officials earlier this week said Khan and the other three suspected London suicide bombers were unknown to security forces before last week's attacks. But the possible new connection to the suspected Operation Crevice bomb plotters strengthens suspicions that the London attacks were executed by an al-Qaeda branch that teamed Pakistani masterminds with Pakistani-British operatives and had tried to strike Britain before.
Investigators believe Khan and the other London suicide bombers, who travelled extensively to countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, received training from al-Qaeda specialists, The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Khan may have helped recruit and prepare his fellow bombers, like him all British-Pakistanis from the northern city of Leeds, investigators told the newspaper.
"That's a connection that they are following right now," a U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the investigation and who asked not to be identified told the Times. "Khan is a pretty key individual. He's a common denominator between the two cases."
Mr. Khawaja has been named, but not charged, by British police as a co-conspirator in an alleged 2004 bomb plot, in which British authorities uncovered a 600-kilogram stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a west London warehouse. The widely available fertilizer becomes a powerful explosive when mixed with common fuel oil and is a popular weapon among terrorists. It was used in the the World Trade Center towers in 1993, Oklahoma City in 1995, the 1996 IRA bombing of London's Canary Wharf and the 2003 Bali bombings.
Mr. Khawaja was denied bail by an Ottawa judge following a two-day hearing in June. Details from the hearing, including prosecution evidence against him, cannot be reported. He remains in custody at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre and is expected to stand trial next year, the first Canadian prosecuted under two Criminal Code charges created as part of the sweeping 2001 Anti-terrorism Act: participating in the activities of a terrorist group and facilitating terrorist activity.
His Ottawa lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, said yesterday he is not surprised British authorities are investigating Khan's possible links to the Operation Crevice group. But said he is not aware of any evidence linking his client to last week's attacks.
"I have not seen any evidence whatsoever to link Mr. Khawaja to any groups or individuals that may or may not have been responsible for the London bombings," he said, adding that police and intelligence agencies have not asked to interview his client in the wake of the London bombings.
He has also previously denied Mr. Khawaja's involvement in the alleged 2004 plot.
Meanwhile, ABC News yesterday linked Khan to another alleged terror plot by British Muslim extremists uncovered by police in August, 2004. Eight men are now awaiting trial on charges of plotting to murder unnamed individuals and to detonate explosives, radioactive or chemical materials.
Citing unidentified officials, the U.S. network reported that the laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al-Qaeda leader, contained plans for a co-ordinated series of attacks on the London Underground system, as well as on financial buildings in New York City and Washington. The computer also reportedly contained the names of the eight men now awaiting trial.
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The casualties of teenage girls could be staggering.
Just how do you derive your observation from this story?
Does not the fact that there are links between these bombers and the United States that are more intimate than the one with Canada imply, by your reasoning, a want of testosterone in that nation?
Or did you just want to take a cheap shot and took the presence of the word "Canadian" as your excuse so to do?
Note that the disclosure of the connection derives from the fact that charges have been laid in Canada under its anti-terrorism statute.
Yet the party propping up Canada's corrupt government (the socialist NDP) strongly oppoesd the Anti-Terrorism Act, even if it goes far below what the USA PATRIOT Act has...
A lot of people in this forum hate Canada, and the UK and Australia, and ...
I don't like the "gay marriage" statute either, but this thread has nothing to do with it.
As to not being your friends, ask the soldiers who have been rotating into the Afghanistan since 2002 and the seamen who have been rotating into the Gulf on frigates acting as part of escort screens for US CVs and on interdiction patrols as part of the War on Terror.
Friends may disagree and brothers may fight.
Ask also the many conservative Canadians who participate in this thread.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003043.html
September 25, 2006
"UK: Muslim Tells Court Explosive Fertilizer Was Bound For Pakistan"
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Ryder asked: "What did you think was going to happen to that fertiliser?"
Garcia responded: "It was to be shipped to Pakistan."
Garcia claimed that he had heard nothing more of the ammonium nitrate until March 2004, the time he was arrested. He claimed that he had become "radicalised" in 1999, while he was at college in Romford, East London. There he had been shown a video which featured rapes and sexual abuse of children which he claimed was performed by Indian military in Kashmir. The video had been shown at the college by the Islamic Society."
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