Intelligence officer tells hearing of men planning atrocity

Published on Tuesday 9 March 2010 21:50

FIVE men linked to a UK terrorist plot which would have caused "mass casualties" were arrested days before they planned to strike, a court heard yesterday.

A British intelligence officer, identified only as ZR, told the Special Immigration Appeals Commission that the group was set to stage an atrocity between 15 and 20 April last year.

He told the hearing that Abid Naseer exchanged coded e-mails with an al-Qaeda operative called Sohaib while planning the attack. The pair used girls' names to cover their tracks, the officer said.

He told the hearing: "On the face of it the e-mails are designed to look, without knowledge of the surrounding context, they're designed to look like correspondence between two people about girls."

Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan are appealing against their deportation to Pakistan on the grounds that they are a national security risk.

Another three men – Shoaib Khan, Abdul Wahab Khan and Tariq Ur Rehman – have already been sent back to Pakistan and are appealing to be allowed to return to the UK.

ZR compared the alleged plan to the 7 July attacks and the airline bomb plot, but refused to reveal details of the similarities in open court.

The five men were arrested during anti-terrorist raids in Manchester and Liverpool in April last year.

The hearing was adjourned until today.