Bloomberg
Three men being held in the U.K. have been indicted in the U.S. on charges of plotting to bomb financial buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington prior to Sept. 11, 2001.
The plot targeted the New York Stock Exchange and a Citicorp office tower, authorities said, and prompted a terrorism alert in New York and Washington last August.
Dhiren Barot, Nadeem Tarmohamed and Qaisar Shaffi are accused of conspiring to use improvised explosive devices and bombs, providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to damage and destroy buildings used in interstate and foreign commerce. Barot is also known as Esa al-Hindi, among other aliases, and ``is a major al-Qaeda player,’’ New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference today.
The U.S. will seek to extradite the three to face trial once the British prosecution of them is complete, Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.
The three men are among eight arrested by British authorities last August and accused of planning attacks in England. During that investigation, British law enforcement said they found evidence three of the suspects had conducted surveillance of buildings in the U.S. and planned to attack them.
In response, U.S. officials issued warnings Aug. 1 citing intelligence on al-Qaeda plans to attack the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Inc.'s Citicorp Building in New York, Prudential Financial Inc.'s Prudential Plaza in Newark, New Jersey, and the main offices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington.
In issuing that alert, then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge cited ``new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack.’’
New York City Police Commissioner Kelly said he knows of no additional information to warrant continued ``heightened concern’’ about the buildings allegedly targeted by the suspects.
The U.S. indictment unsealed today says Barot, Tarmohamed and Shaffi conducted surveillance on the five targeted financial buildings between Aug. 17, 2000, and April 8, 2001 – months before the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by Osama bin Laden’s al- Qaeda terror organization. ``This surveillance included, among other things, video surveillance conducted in Manhattan, New York City, in or about April 2001,’’ the indictment says.
It says Barot served as a lead instructor at a jihad training camp in Afghanistan in 1998 and applied to a college in New York in 2000 ``in order to conceal the true purpose of his subsequent trips to the United States.’’ He was admitted to the college for the 2000 and 2001 school years but didn’t enroll or attend classes, according to the indictment, which doesn’t name the college.