UK al-Qaida plotter given life
Tuesday, 07 Nov 2006 19:47
Dhiren Barot pleaded guilty last month
A British man who admitted to conspiring to blow up targets in the UK and the US has been sentenced to life in jail.
Dhiren Barot, 34, of Willesden, north-west London, was handed a life sentence at Woolwich crown court today after pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder last month.
On delivering the sentence, Mr Justice Butterfield said that Barot would serve a minimum of 40 years, having had his tariff reduced because of his guilty plea.
The judge added that Barot had intended "to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale".
At court, details emerged about how Barot planned to carry out simultaneous attacks on both sides of the Atlantic, targeting major financial centres in New York, Washington DC and Newark.
Prosecuting, Edmund Lawson QC said that Barot, who converted to Islam from Hinduism at the age of 20, had become a "member or close associate of the al-Qaida terrorist organisation" after attending training camps in Pakistan.
He had then been involved in a plan to "kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people" without warning between 2000 and 2004.
It was said that he wanted to emulate the September 11th terror attacks in the US and the Madrid train bombings in March 2004.
Barot was said to have planned to use limousines packed full of gas cylinders and explosives to blow up the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Citigroup buildings in New York, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank buildings in Washington DC and the Prudential buildings in Newark, New Jersey.
The attacks were said to involve exploding the vehicles in underground car parks. Barot also pleaded guilty to conspiring to create a radioactive "dirty bomb" for use on British targets.
During the hearing, Barot's notebooks, documents seized from his computer and grainy video recordings made in New York, were brought as evidence. One such video recording showed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre four months before they were destroyed in 2001, with a sound in the background mimicking an explosion.
Other videos showed police officers, ID check signs and the entrance to the NYSE visitor centre. All the footage was found when police raided a west London property in 2004 after police had been monitoring Barot's movements.
Speaking after the sentencing, Patrick Stevens of the crown prosecution service (CPS) said that the "extent and potential impact of Barot's plans have been made graphically clear in court".
He said the guilty plea was a result of the CPS, police and security services "working tirelessly" to present a case that "would ultimately prove unanswerable".
Home secretary John Reid paid tribute to those who had helped Barot to justice.
"The sentencing of Dhiren Barot today to life and the nature of the information released regarding his case shows the threat the UK faces from terrorism remains very real and serious," Mr Reid said.
"We owe a tremendous debt to the police and intelligence agencies who work extremely hard to protect us and I want to offer my thanks to them for their continuing efforts."