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Verdict in would-be bombers case

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Three British men were found guilty today of conspiring to commit mass murder by blowing up airplanes. Their arrest in 2006 led to the airplane restrictions on liquids. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Rob Watson in London, where the trial took place.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. You’re reminded of one relatively new restriction at airports every time you fly these days – it’s when you’re told you can’t get liquids past security unless they’re of a certain size and in a certain bag and so on. You may have forgotten when those rules went into effect and why. Well there was a reminder today. Three men were found guilty in Britain of conspiring to murder people by blowing up airliners in 2006. Their weapons were homemade liquid bombs. The BBC’s Rob Watson is in London. Rob remind us first of all please what the plan was.

ROB WATSON: The plan was to mix the liquids together on board the airliners and then to explode them in midair. Now the prosecution alleged that there were perhaps seven or even more planes that were going to be targeted on their way from London to North America. So that’s flights to the US and to Canada.

WERMAN: Right and during the trial did it ever emerge what kind of explosive this is? It can actually if in a bottle?

WATSON: Yes. The idea was to mix together a kind of soft drink powder and hydrogen peroxide and I should say that the British government authorities tested out whether such a device would work and indeed so did the BBC. The BBC tried to use the exact mix inside an aircraft [INDISCERNIBLE] and it blew a hole in it.

WERMAN: Wow! How big a hole? And a hole in the wall of the plane?

WATSON: It was certainly the conclusion of the prosecutors and indeed of the explosives expert that the BBC called and that the likelihood is it would have produced a hole big enough to bring the planes down.

WERMAN: We should say, quite sincerely here, you should not try this at home. How close did these plotters get to carrying out their scheme?

WATSON: We’re never going to be entirely sure about that. They had been followed intensively. There were under intense surveillance – the biggest operation that Britain’s police and security services have ever mounted – for about three or four months. And they were brought in, essentially the police say, when they just feared that they were getting close enough to be in a position to carry out the plot. So it may have been days away – maybe longer.

WERMAN: There has been some concern that the detectives on the case may have rounded up the suspects too soon. Why too soon?

WATSON: Yes there was controversy about that. It was because of the arrest of an individual in Pakistan which it was said at the time may have forced the hand of British detectives. And again even behind that there was the suggestion that it was the United States that had got very, very jumpy about this. It was very worried that perhaps the plot would go ahead and were perhaps behind the arrest in Pakistan. But essentially, to answer your question, the concern is always in counterterrorism cases when a plot hasn’t happened that if you move too soon then maybe when you actually get to court you won’t have quite enough evidence to convince a jury that they were serious. Now in this case the prosecution was lucky. It should be said that this was a retrial. In the first trial the jury hadn’t been convinced one way or another.

WERMAN: How come double jeopardy didn’t apply?

WATSON: It didn’t apply because they weren’t acquitted. What happened is that it was hung jury. In other words the jury couldn’t decide, first time around, whether they were guilty and it certainly couldn’t decide that they were not guilty. And so given the magnitude of this case – and one really wants to emphasize this – Britain’s police and intelligence services will tell you this is the biggest crime they can ever remember. One that involved more resources then any other investigation. So that of course was why the British authorities weren’t content to just have the men go free after the first trial.

WERMAN: We know these three men are all British. We know they were willing to be suicide bombers. What more do we know about them and their motives?

WATSON: Well we certainly know that they were linked to Pakistan. They were British citizens of Pakistani decent and certainly at least one of the defendants had visited Pakistan in the run-up to the alleged plot. And indeed he had been there at the same time as the ring leader of the 07/07 attacks on London’s transport system. The intelligence services certainly believe they have links to Pakistan and indeed go further and say that they’re convince that this plot was in fact directed by al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

WERMAN: Four other men were acquitted in this trial. How much support do these kind of people get among Britain’s Muslim population?

WATSON: Well it’s very hard to say as such. Certainly one of the polls that I know sticks in the mind of Britain’s security services was a poll done after the 07/07 attacks in which I think it was suggested that 13% of Britain’s Muslim population of nearly two million considered these people martyrs. And that was something that really, really worried the British authorities. As you can imagine that there was that level of support, or at least sympathy, for the men who’d carried out these actions. How much support these particular plotters would have had is difficult to say.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Rob Watson in London. Thank you very much.

WATSON: Thank you. Good to be with you.

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