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Three men were convicted on Monday in a British court of plotting to blow up at least seven planes travelling from London to the US and Canada. Prosecutors exposed links between the plotters and a mastermind in Pakistan. But as Laura Lynch reports, the story behind the court case is one of both conflict and cooperation between American and British authorities.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston.  There are more details emerging today about the plot to blow-up at least seven airliners using liquid explosives.  That’s the planned attack that “changed the rules” about carrying liquids onto plains in 2006.  Yesterday, three men were convicted in a British court of plotting the attacks.  As The World’s Laura Lynch reports, the story behind the court case is one of both conflict and cooperation between American British authorities.

LAURA LYNCH: Three British-born Muslim men were close to carrying-out their mission, according to prosecutors.  They’d even made suicide videos.  Ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed Ali invoked the name of Osama bin Laden in his.

ABDULLA AHMED ALI: “Sheik Osama warned you many times to leave our land, or you will be destroyed.  And now the time has come for you to be destroyed.”

LYNCH: What the men didn’t know was that they were being watched by British police as they made the videos, created a bomb factory, and made contact with the man believed to be their link to al-Qaida in Pakistan, Rahid Rauf.  The police were waiting for their moment–gathering more and more evidence—but their painstaking investigation was thrown into disarray, and British investigators reportedly blamed the Bush Whitehouse.  They say, American officials were well-briefed on the case, but the Americans still decided to secretly dispatch an envoy of their own, Jose Rodriguez, to Pakistan, apparently believing Rashid Rauf was directing the planned attack from there.  Pakistani authorities soon arrested Rauf, now believed to be linked to several terror plots in Britain.  Fearing the arrest would alert the UK cell, British police had to move-in quickly—much sooner than they wanted to.  Andy Hayman was overseeing the operation for Scotland Yard at the time.

ANDY HAYMAN: The stakes are very high for all concerned—both U. S. and UK.  But to go from a “standing start,” which is what we had to do to secure the arrest of all these suspects was a difficult challenge in itself.  What you ideally would want to do is be much more in control.

LYNCH: But Defense Analyst, Michael Clark, of the Royal United Services Institute believes, at the time, British police weren’t nearly so diplomatic.

MICHAEL CLARK: The British wee “hopping mad” about that, because it meant on the 10^th of August, they had no alternative but to move-in on this, before the evidence was mature as possible.  And there is a general belief in British security circles that the dispatch of Rodriguez to Pakistan came straight from the Whitehouse.

LYNCH: The follow-up from the abrupt arrests rippled-through the prosecution’s case.  At the first trial, in 2008, a jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges that the men had planned to blow-up the planes.  They were tried again, and this time prosecutors went back to the United States to ask for help.  Media lawyer, Mark Stevens, says, “The crucial ingredient was a series of E-mails between the bombers and their contacts in Pakistan.”

MARK STEVENS: Unfortunately, in the first case, it appears that the British authorities either forgot or didn’t think it would be necessary to make that application.  They realized by the time of the second trial that it was necessary, and of course it became a crucial piece of evidence.

LYNCH: And that “crucial piece of evidence” came courtesy of Yahoo, the Internet services company was subpoenaed to turn over the E-mails.  The coded messages may have made all the difference for prosecutors, judge and jury the second-time-around; but, they may not matter at all to another audience.  [SOUNDS LIKE] Hanif Kadir works with young British Muslims, trying to steer them away from extremism.  He knew two of the young men who were convicted yesterday.  Kadir worries that many other British Muslims will believe the men were framed.

HANIF KADIR: I’m afraid it’s not going to go down too well, unfortunately.  I think, you know, it’s a good day for counterterrorism; it’s a good day, you know, for the police and military; but it’s a sad day for the Muslim community.  And locally, I know the concerns and the language that these young people are going to be speaking, “It’s took two trials.  Why did we have to have a re-trial?  Because they didn’t get the result that they wanted in the first time, so they got it at the second time.  So the guys didn’t stand a chance.”  So, it’s going to play on … You know, the conspiracy theory is going to play around.

LYNCH: And that is a worrying sentiment for police and politicians as they gauge the terror threat in Britain.  This may be described as the most serious plot ever devised in the country; but already, there are warnings that it certainly won’t be the last.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch, in London.

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