Britain: A British al-Qaeda member was jailed for a minimum of 40 years yesterday for plotting death and carnage on a "colossal and unprecedented" scale on both sides of the Atlantic.
Muslim convert Dhiren Barot (34) led a conspiracy to murder thousands of "wholly innocent men, women and children" in the US and the UK and his plot was designed to strike "at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state".
The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, added that if successful, Barot's plans for a series of September 11th-style synchronised terror attacks would have affected "thousands personally, millions indirectly and ultimately the whole nations of the US and the UK".
He jailed Barot for life at Woolwich Crown Court in London and said he would have to serve at least 40 years in jail before being considered for release.
Barot, one of the most senior al -Qaeda members captured by British security agencies and a key lieutenant of the network's leading figures, sat impassively as the judge announced the jail term.
Home secretary John Reid said the nature and severity of Barot's sentence demonstrated that the terrorist threat was "very real and serious".
For at least nine years until his arrest in August 2004, Barot's full-time occupation, to all intents and purposes, was terrorism.
In the US, his plan was to collapse five of the country's most important financial institutions in a series of simultaneous attacks on buildings in New York, Washington and Newark.
Barot proposed either driving vehicles packed with explosives into underground car parks or ramming oil-tanker lorries into the structures and blowing them up. He drew up detailed documents setting out their layout, security measures, access and escape routes as well as a host of other information.
In Britain, he planned an array of synchronised attacks which included using explosive-packed stretch limousines in a bombing campaign; setting off a dirty bomb; unleashing a gas attack on the Heathrow Express; and bombing Tube trains under the Thames in a bid to puncture the tunnel lining and flood the Underground system. Counter-terrorism sources believe Barot could have been just weeks away from carrying out one or more of these attacks in Britain at the time of his arrest.
On July 25th, 2004, during a raid on a terrorist house in Gujrat, Pakistan, a laptop computer was found. Detectives discovered a document entitled "gas limos project". Over 39 pages, the author, Abu Esa Al-Hindi - another Barot alias - detailed plans to pack stretch limousines with gas cylinders and explosives to carry out a co-ordinated series of bombings in the UK.
Analysis of some of the many thousands of computer files recovered after his arrest revealed that he had conducted detailed research on some of London's top hotels and mainline stations. The research had taken more than a year and included detailed costings. Barot estimated the cost of the limo project at at least £60,000 (€89,483).
Hacking their way into the files, detectives uncovered a document called "Final Presentation", containing plans for a "radiation dispersal device", in layman's terms, a dirty bomb.
Again, Barot had conducted extensive research, putting the cost of the project at £70,000. His planning included judgments on the most effective ways to deploy the weapon, research into various kinds of radioisotope, the health effects of exposure and the best means of dispersal.
"An RDD (Radiation Dispersal Device) attack," he wrote, "can produce general panic, health consequences, including immediate fatalities and long-term increases in cancer incidents, long-term denial of property use, disruption of services and property and facility decontamination needs," he wrote.
In his conclusions, entitled "Final Word", Barot made clear that he wanted a simultaneous and deadly series of attacks.
"At the conclusion of this presentation we remind the reader that what we have aimed for is synchronised, concurrent (back- to-back) execution on the same day and time," he said.
Barot was born in Baroda, India, and brought to the UK by his parents in 1972 at around 12 months. At the well-regarded Kingsbury High School he was a studious but average pupil.
Friends say he planned a career in hotel management and was interested in fashion and music. He left school in 1988 before going on to work in various travel agencies and hotels.
It was in the early 1990s that he became a convert to Islam. According to one witness, Barot was exposed to "semi-extreme and more radical" talks about conflicts involving Muslims in Chechnya, Kashmir and Somalia.
Barot began to frequently discuss how to help "oppressed" Islamic people abroad.
In September 1995, he left his job for a "prolonged" trip overseas which took him to Pakistan and later to a terrorist training camp in Kashmir.
There he was given instruction in using weapons and explosives, a pattern that was to be repeated in a later trip to the Philippines.
"Class notes" that Barot appears to have taken during his time at the camp in Kashmir showed he learned skills such as "how to blow up a bridge" and details on making poisons such as ricin and botulinum, the most toxic substance known to man.
His decision to embrace Islam and travel abroad appears to have upset his father and left him estranged from his family but he returned to the UK, where at one point he penned The Army of Madinah In Kashmir, written under the alias Esa Al-Hindi, about the conflict.
It is around this point that he may have established his links with key al-Qaeda figures - allegedly including Hambali and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the latter thought to be the "principal architect" of 9/11.
According to a short biography accompanying the book, he trained other fighters at a camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. It also suggests that he fought in "Indian-occupied Kashmir".
The biography finishes by saying that Barot eventually moved to the Muslim area of southern Thailand and married.
He travelled to America in August 2000 on the pretence of enrolling as a student and possibly began the process of casing targets on behalf of al-Qaeda. In April 2001 he filmed buildings in New York, including the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
It was later that Barot turned his attention to attacking the UK. It was not until 2004 that Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch and Britain's intelligence agencies became aware that a senior al-Qaeda operative was working within the UK.
It took several months, however, to identify that man as Dhiren Barot.