Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

90 • BRITISH-U.S. FLIGHTS BOMB PLOTHad the attacks been successful, it is estimated that at least 1,500people would have been killed.Of the 24 suspects originally arrested, only eight were chargedwith conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to bomb aircraft.The suspects were all British men of Pakistani origin, includingAbdullah Ahmad ‘Ali, 27, believed to have been the cell leader inGreat Britain; Mohammad Gulzar, 27, believed to have been thegroup’s supervisor and link to supporters in Pakistan; Assad Sarwar,28, believed to have been the group’s explosives expert; and TanvirHussein, 27, Umar Islam, 30, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, IbrahimSavant, 27, and Waheed Zaman, 24. Rashid Rauf, another suspectbelieved to have been supervising the operation along with Gulzar,eluded arrest in Britain but was detained after fleeing to Pakistan; heapparently was set free by his police escorts on 15 December 2007.On 15 December 2007, U.S. and Pakistani officials claimed that Raufwas killed on 22 November 2008 by a predator drone unmannedaerial vehicle, a claim that his family denied.Shortly after the plot was exposed, the U.S. Homeland SecuritySecretary, Michael Chertoff, stated that this plot appeared to havebeen an al Qa’eda operation. The director of the Defense IntelligenceAgency (DIA), Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, hadtestified before the U.S. Senate in 2007 that both ‘Ali and Sarwarhad made several trips to Chaman in the Federally AdministeredTribal Areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where they werebelieved to have met with senior al Qa’eda personnel, while Raufand Gulzar were believed to have been the main operational supervisorson behalf of al Qa’eda. During the raids police seizedbomb-making equipment and computers and storage media withover 6,000 gigabytes of memory. The men had bought a flat inLondon for $271,000 in cash, which is believed to have come fromal Qa’eda. The plot was exposed by an undercover agent. The trialbegan on 3 April 2008 and ended on 8 September 2008 with theconvictions of ‘Ali, Sarwar, and Tanvir on charges of conspiracyto commit murder but no convictions on the charges of conspiracyto bomb aircraft in flight. While Mohammad Gulzar was acquittedof all charges, the other seven defendants also confessed to seekingto create a public nuisance over plans to distribute their martyrdomvideos, which were to have been released upon the bombings of theairplanes. None of the eight defendants admitted to the charge of