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From Algeria to London
The complex and lengthy trail that led to Kamel Bourgass's convictions began when detectives launched an investigation, following the 9/11 attacks, into a number of loosely-aligned north African al-Qaida sympathisers living in Britain. At first, police thought these individuals were no more than a financial support network, raising money for terrorists abroad through document forgery and credit card scams. "Intelligence told us these people were engaged in wholesale fundraising for terrorism, and that this money was being moved abroad, as it was certainly not reflected in the very spartan, simple lifestyles of those involved here," said a senior security source. "But we wanted to explore the boundaries, to see if it stopped at fundraising." But the discovery of the photocopied recipes for ricin, and other poisons, including cyanide, and information on explosives and bomb-making, in a house in Thetford, Norfolk, in September 2002 strengthened the belief that some of those individuals could be terrorists plotting an unconventional attack in the UK. It was the arrest that same month of Muhammad Meguerba, whom police admitted initially underestimating as a minor figure, that would eventually expose Bourgass's activities. Police found a false documents and a fake French passport in Meguerba's premises, but as he was then married to an Irish woman, he was able to show he was in the UK legally, and was bailed pending further inquiries. Meguerba skipped bail, and fled the UK through Liverpool, travelling first to Spain, then to Morocco and back to his native Algeria, where he was picked up by the authorities in December 2002. He told them he had been part of a UK-based group trying to make ricin. He gave a name, Nadir Habra, believed to be Bourgass's real name, and described a flat in north London, which although he was un able to give a precise address, British police established was a particular flat in High Road, Wood Green, Bourgass's former residence. The information dove-tailed with the photocopied ricin recipe British police had found in Thetford three months earlier and the nationwide hunt for Bourgass began. At the Wood Green flat in January 2003, police found the handwritten originals of the recipes for ricin and other poisons, and various ingredients, including cherry stones and apple seeds. While police were surprised at the ramshackle nature of the operation - the fruit seeds stored in plastic cups in the back of a messy wardrobe seemed more third form science project than 21st century warfare - they were in no doubt about the seriousness of what they found. "It exploded the myth that CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] materials are made in some sort spotless Dr Strangelove laboratory," said a source. "This was garden shed, kitchen chemistry, stuff you pick up in the average high street. It required adolescent knowledge upward." While government scientists at Porton Down found no evidence of actual ricin, they agreed the recipes were viable, and police were convinced they were looking at serious attempts to launch a poison attack in the UK. Tremendous effort would have been necessary to produce even a minuscule quantity of ricin or cyanide, using Bourgass's recipes. But detectives believed the intention was to cause panic by either targeting individuals, placing contaminated items in shops, or even smearing the poison on door handles in north London. Acting on intelligence, officers went to Bournemouth to search for Bourgass there but he had already moved on. It was by chance, during a separate operation against illegal immigrants in Manchester, that Bourgass was discovered in a flat in Crumpsall Lane, sparking the attack which led to him murdering DC Stephen Oake on January 14 2003. The inquiry spread throughout London and the UK, including the highly sensitive search of Finsbury Park mosque in June 2003. Eight other men were arrested and charged in connection with the ricin plot. Four were tried with Bourgass and were acquitted of all the conspiracy charges. Charges against four others who were to have stood trial in the next month, were dropped yesterday. All four tried with Bourgass are Algerian and had links to him, to a greater or lesser degree, although their attitudes towards him differed. The youngest of the group, Sidali Feddag, 20, gave him a place to stay while his own asylum application was being heard. Feddag had come to the UK in 2000 as a teenager with his father and had to fend for himself when his father returned to Algeria, leaving him alone in London. He applied for asylum in 2001, was refused and then appealed. He was placed in local authority accommodation in High Road, Wood Green, and allowed Bourgass to live there, where the pair shared the room in which some of the supposed ingredients for poisons were found. He later moved, he said, to Leyton, in east London. Feddag always denied being a party to any plot and declined to give evidence. His defence was that he had been collecting the ingredients for innocent purposes and that they constituted traditional Algerian herbal medicines. Like three of his co-accused, he had bogus documentation, his being a false French passport which he said he had obtained on Blackstock Road, in Highbury, north London, for £190. He had made up a new name and details for himself and chosen a date of birth in 1980, adding five years to his age. Mouloud Sihali, in his late 20s, appeared to be the most worldly of the defendants. He had a number of Lithuanian, Swedish and German girlfriends and worked as a waiter to make ends meet. He was also a computer expert who told police when he was detained that he had studied nuclear physics in France. As far as the prosecution was concerned, he was said to have provided passports and to have been an expert in false documentation. He kept a diary with details of his own various false identities but was arrested in an attempt to commit an alleged fraud for a loan of £12,000 to £15,000 from an internet banking service. He told the police who arrested him that he had been in the UK for three years and added: "You will find out I'm OK." He used a cousin's identity. A third co-defendant, David Khalef, 32, had already pleaded guilty to possession of five false passports which were found hidden in a bed base in High Road, Ilford, Essex. Neighbours said he would disappear from his flat for months on end and he spent time in Halifax and East Anglia where he had found work picking fruit. Although he had a false French passport and claimed to be French, he was, in fact, Algerian and had done military service in Algeria. He arrived in England in 1998 and claimed asylum which he was refused in December 2000. His appeal was turned down in June 2001 and he became an illegal entrant. With an IQ of 75, he was borderline mentally handicapped and described in court as being of "very low intelligence". Arrested in Thetford he was asked "Do you speak English?" and replied: "Yes, but I am not a terrorist." Mustapha Taleb, 34, worked in the bookshop at the Finsbury Park mosque and was the person who handled requests to use its photocopier. It was through a fingerprint on one of the recipes which had been photocopied at the mosque that he was linked with Bourgass. He was the only defendant legally in Britain. At his home in Finsbury Park, north London, his laptop had 50 files which contained Algerian opposition material and one file on bomb-making which was "incomplete and incoherent" according to experts. The five Algerian men in the dock were accused of two conspiracies: the first, to murder between January 1 2002 and January 23 2003 in the UK and the second to commit a public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear and injury in the same time period. The case against them suggested that the five had conspired together, according to the prosecution, "in furtherance of their extremist Islamic cause. They were part of a group, based in London, sharing common beliefs and a common aim." The evidence against them, as the prosecution saw it, indicated that, with Kamel Bourgass at the centre, the five men were aiming to cause either death or panic on the streets of Britain. It was this case that the jury rejected this week after four weeks of deliberation. The trial of the five was one of the most complex and lengthy ever held at the Old Bailey. The first legal submissions were made last July and the jury sworn in last September. There were frequent delays and the jury was often sent home amid legal arguments or because of illness among jurors. In the end, the verdicts came only after four weeks of deliberation with one of the jurors absent. The accused have been held in Belmarsh prison for the last two years and remained there throughout the trial. According to their lawyers, all have suffered from varying degrees of depression. Security was intense with sometimes as many as 14 prison officers in the dock with the defendants behind plexiglass screens. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-04-15 |
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