Bomb Plot Evidence ‘Immense,’ British Say

In the first unveiling of evidence in the alleged plot to down U.S.-bound airliners, British authorities said Monday that their searches had turned up “martyrdom videos,” suicide notes, bomb-making equipment and maps.

The evidence, offered to bolster charges filed Monday against 11 suspects, hinted at a trove of material and leads yet to be examined.

“The scale is immense. Inquiries will span the globe. The enormity of the alleged plot will be matched only by our determination to follow every lead, and every line of inquiry,” said Peter Clarke, chief of counter-terrorism for the London police.

But less than two weeks after arresting two dozen suspects, British authorities have faced increased skepticism from the public. In particular, many of Britain’s estimated 1.5 million Muslims have been angered by previous roundups, including two in which suspects were shot, that failed to uncover adequate evidence of terrorism.

Prosecutors Monday emphasized that suspicion this time was well placed. “The threat from terrorism is real, it is here, it is deadly and it is enduring,” Clarke said at a news conference announcing the charges. “As we look for explanations, we cannot afford to be complacent and ignore the reality of what we face.”

Authorities said they expected to spend months examining the results of at least 69 searches of houses, businesses, cars and woods, which have yielded more than 400 computers, 200 cellphones and 8,000 computer data-storage devices.

Eleven suspects remain in custody without charges. One suspect, a woman, was released Monday.

Eight suspects were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Two others, including a young mother whose husband was charged in the plot, were accused to failing to disclose information that could have prevented a terrorist attack.

A 17-year-old boy, who was not identified because of his age, was charged with possessing a book on bombs, suicide notes and the wills of people who were prepared to commit acts of terror. He also had in his possession a map of Afghanistan containing information “likely to be useful” to a person preparing an act of terrorism, authorities said.

Nine of those charged Monday are British nationals of Pakistani descent. Two are non-Asian converts to Islam.

Two brothers who have been identified in British press reports as the purported ringleaders of the plot -- Rashid Rauf, whose arrest in Pakistan is thought to have triggered the other arrests, and his brother, Tayib, arrested in Birmingham -- are among the 11 suspects who have not been charged in the British courts; Rashid Rauf remains in custody in Pakistan.

Susan Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service counter-terrorism division, who signed off on the charges, said the remaining suspects were “under active investigation.”

“Their position is being assessed on a regular basis with a view to considering the need to keep them in detention,” she said. “We cannot yet make a decision about whether further charges will follow,” or whether authorities will seek to extend their detention when the current warrant runs out Wednesday, she said.

Under British law, police can hold terrorism suspects for 28 days without filing criminal charges, though a judge must review the cases periodically during that period.

Legal analysts said the government was under substantial public pressure to disclose the nature of the evidence because of two recent controversial cases.

In the first case, a 27-year-old Brazilian man was shot to death in the subway by police officers who said he had emerged from a house that was being watched, and acted suspiciously. The July 22, 2005, incident came a day after police foiled a bomb plot aimed at London’s transit system, and three weeks after the explosions that killed 52 people on that system.

In June, police looking for a purported chemical device raided a house in the neighborhood of Forest Gate and shot 23-year-old Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who lived there, in what police said was an “accidental discharge” of an officer’s weapon. Kahar survived the shooting. No chemical device was found.

Public skepticism about the current case has grown in the days since authorities announced sweeping arrests and a plot police said at the beginning was “intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.”

Muslim community leaders have warned that a third case of unfounded or exaggerated allegations is likely to exacerbate tensions and resentment among Britain’s Muslims.

Some community leaders Monday said the new evidence -- presented only in its barest outlines, and not connected to any specific suspects -- still leaves room for skepticism. Much of what the authorities claim is physical evidence of bomb-making materials, for example, including hydrogen peroxide and electrical components, also could have innocent explanations, they suggested.

“People bleach their hair with hydrogen peroxide,” said Mohammed Khaliel, a spokesman for a mosque in the town of High Wycombe, which several of the suspects attended.

“Hydrogen peroxide you can easily buy anywhere; you can buy it across the counter without any documentation,” he said. “And if you were going to actually make something that could damage things, you would need a huge quantity,” he added. “It would be unlikely someone would be carrying a drum of it onto a plane.”

He also said he believed some of the evidence attributed to the alleged bomb plot may have included material that suspects allegedly downloaded from the Internet. “These young people may very well have downloaded videos off the Internet. That’s not necessarily what it’s portrayed to be,” he said.

British law affords far less leeway than the American courts in discussing evidence before trial. Analysts said it was unusual for authorities to release even as much information as they did about the evidence collected. Doing so, said Roger O’Keefe, deputy director of the Lauterpacht Center for International Law at Cambridge University, risks jeopardizing the trial and the ongoing investigation.

“It’s an extraordinarily difficult problem for the government,” he said. “If they reveal a lot of evidence to the public ... first of all, they compromise the lives of their informants, and secondly, they undoubtedly jeopardize ongoing investigations into similar intelligence question marks,” he said.