By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
One of the many irritants of post-9/11 air travel is the search of carry-on bags for containers ― shampoo, shaving cream, tooth paste ― above a certain size and their disposal in bins kept at security checkpoints for that purpose.
As niggling as enforcement of these rules can be, the outcome of a terrorist trial in Britain shows that the authorities had no choice but to impose them, indeed would have been irresponsible in the extreme not to.
Three young British Muslims ― Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 29, Assad Sanwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28 ― were convicted of a 2006 attempt to simultaneously bomb seven U.S.- and Canadian-bound airliners in mid-flight. If the plot had fully succeeded, it would have resulted in a fearful loss of life ― perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 passengers ― and enormous economic damage.
The plot was chillingly simple. The plotters ― eight were charged ― would board the planes with soft drink bottles, drained and refilled with a hydrogen peroxide-based explosive. Batteries and simple detonators would be packed in their carry-ons. Once aloft, the components would be assembled into live bombs in the airplane lavatories.
The guilty verdicts were the British justice system's second effort at trying the men. Last year, the three were convicted of conspiracy to murder but not specifically of planning to blow up the airliners. This year, they were found guilty of that charge.
Of the other five, one was convicted of conspiracy to murder and the jurors did not reach a verdict in the case of another three, meaning there may be a third trial. The eighth was found not guilty on all counts.
The plot was masterminded by a senior al-Qaida figure, Abu Ubaidah al-Masri, since dead of natural causes, operating out of the tribal areas of Pakistan. He worked through a go-between, Rashid Rauf.
British counter terrorists say that the United States, nervous that the British were cutting it too close, arranged for the arrest of Rauf in Pakistan, forcing the British to arrest the plotters before they were ready. Specifically, they wanted to catch the plotters buying tickets for the targeted flights.
As it is, the prosecutors had amply damning evidence even by the strict rules of admissibility in the British courts ― e-mails, martyrdom videos, memory sticks with bomb-making instructions and airline schedules and a hidden suitcase packed with bomb-making materials.
Rauf and the other eight were not the angry young men with no prospects from a sprawling Asian slum but British-born into lives of comparative comfort. Why they would decide, with their whole lives ahead of them, to become mass killers is a question that the trial did not answer.
That answer is of some importance because British police say there was evidence of a wider plot and told the Associated Press ``some would-be second wave suicide bombers had likely evaded arrest."
Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).