British Muslim Admits Plotting Attacks on Financial Institutions

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The New York Sun

LONDON — A British Muslim confessed yesterday plotting a series of coordinated attacks in Britain including one involving a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

Dhiren Barot, from Kingsbury, North London, also pleaded guilty to planning attacks against the IMF, World Bank, and financial institutions in New York, Washington, and Newark.

Lawyer Edmund Lawson told Woolwich Crown Court, South London: “These plans to carry out explosions at those premises with no warning were basically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible.”

Mr. Barot described a car bomb plot called the “Gas Limos Project” as “the main cornerstone of a series of planned attacks” in Britain.

The court heard that Mr. Barot had asked for his plans to be outlined as part of his guilty plea.

“The principal planned attack involved packing three limousines with gas cylinders, explosives and the like and detonating them in underground car parks,” Mr. Lawson said.

Mr. Barot was said to have three other projects, including one that he called the “Radiation (Dirty Bomb) Project.”

He had wanted the attacks to be launched in a “synchronized, concurrent, and back-to-back” way with the main Gas Limos Project.

But the court heard he believed that the Radiation Project deserved to be an independent plot in its own right and would cause a number of further “collateral” objectives such as “injury, fear, terror, and chaos.”

Expert evidence suggested the Radiation Project, which was aimed at terrorizing 500 people, would have been unlikely to kill but would cause “considerable fear, panic and social disruption.”

Mr. Barot is said to have made notes of his plans and to have made a video of targets in New York.The projects, titled “Rough Presentation” and “Final Presentation” were saved on a computer.

Seven other men also face charges of conspiracy to murder. They deny the charges.

The prosecution has accepted that there is no evidence to contradict the defense assertion that no funding had been received and no bomb-making equipment or vehicles had been purchased.

Mr. Barot, 34, yesterday became the first Muslim accused of plotting explosions in Britain to plead guilty. He was arrested in August 2004.

A short man, with a neatly clipped beard, he stood up and answered clearly “I plead guilty” when the charge of conspiracy to murder was put to him yesterday.

He spent much of the hearing tapping notes into a laptop computer.

Quietly spoken and smartly dressed, Mr. Barot is not the usual image of a terrorist. He was born a Hindu and brought up in a north London suburb by middle-class parents.

Family friends have told the Daily Telegraph how Mr. Barot’s father, a banker from Nairobi, fled the worsening situation for Asians in Kenya in 1973, when Dhiren was two.

Manu Barot and his wife Bhartia arrived in Britain with Dhiren and his older sister and moved into a neat 1930s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac in Kingsbury.

While Manu had been a successful professional in Kenya, in Britain, his qualifications were worthless, and he was forced to turn to factory work while his wife worked in a Sainsbury’s supermarket.

Dhiren and his sister, three years his senior, attended a successful local high school and worked hard. She went on to university and became a teacher.

Dhiren was less academic but was known for his interest in fashion and music.

He planned to become a travel agent after leaving school and to work in hotel management and travel the world.

He became increasingly interested in Islam and converted when he was 20, prompting a rift with his father, who by then was suffering from a heart condition.

Mr. Barot traveled to Pakistani-controlled Kashmir to “investigate the duty of jihad.”

He trained with one of the groups fighting Indian troops in the region and said later that he had “witnessed a side of Islam which cannot be found in classrooms.”

The trial continues.


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