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Al Qaeda Briton 'plotted to kill thousands'

Al Qaeda terrorists planned to use "dirty bombs" to blow up the Heathrow Express or a Tube train passing under the Thames, a court heard today. Dhiren Barot, 34, also plotted to strike at the West End's leading hotels and mainline railway stations.

The catastrophic results would have produced "another black day for the enemies of Islam and victory for the Muslims", he wrote.

Barot expected the devastation and loss of life to match 9/11 and the Madrid bombs, the court heard. The attacks would have been coordinated in a series of back-to-back explosions with further strikes on landmark buildings in Washington, New York and Newark, New Jersey.

Barot costed every aspect of the terrorist outrages, then travelled to Pakistan to present them to al Qaeda bosses "like a business plan", the court was told.

But Barot and other conspirators were stopped by a brilliant police operation and meticulous detective work pieced together exactly what the terrorists planned for London.

Barot, from Willesden, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to carry out murder over four years between January 2000 and August 2004.

Part of his plea acknowledges his part in each of the London plots and in the conspiracies to attack the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington, the Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York, and the Prudential skyscraper in Newark.

As Edmund Lawson QC, prosecuting, revealed the astonishing details of the planned terrorist outrages, the slight figure of Barot, with goatee beard, sat quietly in the dock at Woolwich Crown Court wearing a dark jacket over a dark T-shirt. Mr Lawson said the two atrocities were suynchronised with an attack in America so that - in Barot's own words - "they would be coordinated back-to-back as they were with 9/11 thus forming another memorable black day for the enemies of Islam and victory for the Muslims."

Mr Lawson said: "The principal object [was] to kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent people without warning, but there were other subsidiary and collateral objectives - to cause maximum damage to property, injure and terrorise people and at minimum to cause widespread disruption and subsequent economic loss."