New reports link anti-terror raids in Britain, Pakistan

By The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers

AP An armed police officer stands on patrol at London's Heathrow Airport yesterday after reports of an al-Qaida plot to attack there. A spokeswoman said airport authorities had not heard anything from the government "to suggest the threat level to Heathrow has increased."

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The documents relating to five U.S. financial institutions in New York; Newark, N.J.; and Washington, D.C., were found on the computers of two accused members of Osama bin Laden's network arrested in Pakistan last month. Pakistani intelligence officials said the computers also held images of Heathrow, and that this information was passed on to British officials.

The revelations draw a link between two major sweeps against suspected al-Qaida networks in Pakistan and Britain — as well as the U.S. alerts announced Sunday. At least 20 people have been detained in Pakistan in the past month, and Britain is holding 12 men from its raids Tuesday. British police yesterday announced the arrest of another man, wanted in the United States for allegedly helping finance terrorist activity.

Separately, Justice Department officials announced yesterday the arrests of two men associated with a mosque in Albany, N.Y. Charged with money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to conceal material support for terrorism, they face up to 70 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

The arrests of Yassin Muhiddin Aref, 34, and Muhammad Mosharref Hossain, 49 — which officials said were unrelated to the heightened terror alert announced Sunday — stem from an FBI sting operation, officials said. An FBI informant posed as an arms salesman involved in a purported plot to sell shoulder-fired missiles and assassinate Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations.

Among the 13 arrested in Britain was a senior al-Qaida member known as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi, who the official said is suspected of having written the surveillance reports detailing security, construction and other features of the Citigroup Center Building and New York Stock Exchange, the Prudential Building in Newark, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington.

Details of possible targets in the United States and Britain, as well as al-Hindi's name, were found on computers belonging to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — a Tanzanian indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa — and a Pakistani computer expert identified as Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, said two Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Much of the information was at least several years old, some of it preceding the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials have acknowledged, although some of it may have been updated as recently as January.

A Lahore-based intelligence official involved in the investigation after the July 13 arrest of Khan said his computer contained photographs of Heathrow airport, as well as pictures of underpasses that run beneath several buildings in London.

A Heathrow spokeswoman said airport authorities had not heard anything from the government "to suggest the threat level to Heathrow has increased in recent weeks."

British police also said yesterday they had arrested a British man, Babar Ahmad, wanted on terrorism charges in a warrant issued by a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, and that anti-terror officials were searching three "residential premises" and one business in southwest London on behalf of U.S. authorities.

Ahmad, 30, is accused in the United States of trying to raise funds for "acts of terrorism in Chechnya and Afghanistan" from 1998 through 2003, according to the U.S. extradition warrant. His detention was not believed to be linked to the arrest of the 12 on Tuesday.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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