LONDON — A group of young British Muslims accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic jetliners had accumulated files on a wide range of other potential targets, including a tunnel under the River Thames at Greenwich and a major gas pipeline, a prosecutor said Friday.
In the second day of the trial of the eight men on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and acts of terrorism, prosecutors presented surveillance of a "bomb factory" the men allegedly set up in a run-down London apartment. The prosecution also played portions of six "martyrdom videos" in which the men declared their readiness to be killed attacking the U.S. and Britain for the nations' roles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.
The solemn-faced young men in the videos acknowledge that they are not foreign antagonists but British citizens, raised in the West but determined to punish what they see as the complacency of fellow citizens in the face of Muslim suffering.
"I do not consider anyone innocent . . . while their sons and their daughters and their soldiers or whatever are . . . pillaging the Muslim lands of its resources and dishonoring our Muslim brothers and sisters," Umar Islam, 29, says against the backdrop of a black flag inscribed in Arabic, in a video excerpt played to the jury.
"Most of you are too busy, you know, watching 'Home and Away' and 'EastEnders,' complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to even care [about] anything," he says of fellow Britons. "I know, because I've come from that."
Tanvir Hussain, 27, says in his video that the group is aiming at "economic, government and military" targets.
"Collateral damage is going to be inevitable, and people are going to die, because, you know, it's work at a price," Hussain says. "I only wish I could do this again, you know, come back and . . . just do it again and again until people come to their senses and realize, you know, don't mess with the Muslims."
Following the arrests of nearly two dozen suspects in August 2006, British authorities were tight-lipped about the investigation, dubbed Operation Overt, that had triggered the arrests and weeks of searches throughout suburban London.
Only as the trial has opened in London's Woolwich Crown Court has the massive extent of the police surveillance operation become apparent. Prosecutor Peter Wright has presented a detailed picture of a group of disparate men in their 20s united in their alleged determination to blow up at least seven transatlantic passenger jets with homemade liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks.
