JEDDAH, 14 August 2003 — Three men, including a Briton, were indicted in the United States yesterday in connection with an alleged plot to smuggle in a Russian surface-to-air missile. A raid in Saudi Arabia Tuesday on the hide-out of an Al-Qaeda cell also led to the discovery of a plot by the 10-member group to mount an attack on a British commercial aircraft, possibly using a lightweight missile, according to intelligence officials. The two events may have been linked, according to newswire reports.
However, a senior official at the British Foreign Office in London told Arab News that it had “no knowledge” of any connection between the two events.
“We are not aware of any such links,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
British Airways suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia with immediate effect yesterday after the discovery of what US officials described as a plot to attack commercial aircraft at Riyadh airport. BA said it had grounded flights from London to both Riyadh and Jeddah after talks with Britain’s Department of Transport.
A transport department spokesman said there had been “credible intelligence of a serious threat to UK aviation interests in Saudi Arabia,” but refused to specify the risk. However a US official told AFP in Washington that BA acted after Saudi authorities discovered a document indicating Saudi militants had been “casing” King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) in Riyadh ahead of a possible attack.
BA declined to say whether the suspension of its flights was linked to the alleged plot.
“Because of heightened security concerns in Riyadh, we have suspended flights to Saudi Arabia until further notice,” Chris Phibbs, general manager for BA in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News in Jeddah last night.
“We have a number of air crews here and are making arrangements for them to leave,” he said, adding that everything possible was being done to minimize the inconvenience to passengers.
On Tuesday, seven militants were arrested after a police raid in Riyadh during which one of their number and three officers were killed in a protracted shootout.
The raid was connected to the discovery of “a car with the KKIA casing document” on Monday, the US official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Western intelligence services are known to be increasingly concerned at the possibility of terrorists throughout the world using a highly mobile shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile launcher to shoot down a commercial jet.
In May, the British government ordered BA and other British airlines to suspend flights to Kenya after warnings of an “imminent” threat to aircraft there.
It followed a failed attempt in November 2002 to shoot down an Israeli tourist jet with shoulder-launched rockets as the plane took off from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, an attack blamed on Al-Qaeda. The terrorism-related charges were leveled yesterday against the British arms dealer who praised Osama Bin Laden and thought he was smuggling into the United States missiles that would be used to down commercial aircraft, federal prosecutors announced.
Two other suspected accomplices to the plot, which was really a sting operation orchestrated over the past 18 months by US, Russian and British authorities, face conspiracy charges, the prosecutors said.
Two of the three suspects appeared before a federal magistrate amid tight security at the courthouse, where authorities spelled out charges against them.
Hemant Lakhani, identified as a well-known British arms dealer of Indian origin, was accused of providing material support to terrorists and of illegal weapons dealing.
A second man, Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, was charged with illegally transmitting money to help finance the plot. A third, Yehuda Abraham, was due to appear later yesterday in federal court in New York on similar charges.
Lakhani was arrested on Tuesday in Newark after trying to sell a Russian-made shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile to FBI informants posing as extremists who wanted to shoot down a large commercial airliner, officials said. The missile was intended “specifically for the purpose of shooting an American airliner out of the sky.”
Meanwhile in London, police said they searched two sites at the request of US authorities in the sting operation. No arrests were made, and officials declined to say where they were carried out.
Lakhani, wearing a rumpled striped shirt, bowed his head and said nothing during his court appearance. A lawyer representing Lakhani later declined to comment to reporters.
The charge of providing support to terrorists carries a possible 15-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine, while the weapons charges could mean 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Lakhani and Hameed were each given a court date for later this month to determine if they might be released on bail.
According to a criminal complaint, the sting began in December 2001, when officials learned about Lakhani from an informant. They used the unidentified informant to contact Lakhani, a British citizen born in India, and investigators said they audiotaped and videotaped 150 conversations between the two men. Lakhani made a number of anti-US remarks during those talks, it said.
