These are the guys who have made it impossible for you to carry your double latte, or your toothpaste, onto the airplane. “Five men plead guilty in trans-Atlantic airline plot,” from CTV.ca, July 14 (thanks to Visvas):
Five of eight men accused of plotting to detonate liquid explosives on board trans-Atlantic passenger jets — including some destined for Canada — pleaded guilty to lesser offences Monday.
Three men — Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27 — admitted to conspiring to cause explosions.
The three men and two other defendants — Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30 — also admitted to “conspiring to cause a public nuisance” by creating videos threatening suicide bomb attacks.
The five men, along with three other defendants are accused of targeting at least seven airliners heading to Canada and the U.S. in 2006.
The two Air Canada flights were bound for Montreal and Toronto.
All of the men are British with ties to Pakistan.
Prosecutors say the group wanted to kill hundreds of passengers using bombs concealed in soft drink bottles.
The men were close to carrying out their plan but were arrested in August 2006, alleges the Crown.
Although Ali, Sarwar and Hussain admitted to conspiring to cause explosions the men said they weren’t targeting planes from London to North America.
Ali and Sarwar told the court they were getting the weapons together to stage a publicity stunt as a promotion for an anti-Western documentary.
Ali said he hoped a small, non-fatal blast at Britain’s Houses of Parliament, an oil refinery, or at an airport would create attention for his film….
Yeah, sure, that’s it: it was a documentary!