Terrorists Plead Guilty In Liquid Explosives Air Terror Plot

For all those people who wondered why the US government and TSA banned liquids on flights and restricted people to specific amounts of liquids, it was because of a disrupted terror plot.

Five of those involved entered guilty pleas on lesser included charges today rather than face the prospect of being found guilty on the most serious of the charges.

Prosecutors say the five, along with three other defendants, wanted to kill hundreds of passengers with bombs concealed in soft drink bottles as their flights crossed the Atlantic Ocean or passed over North American cities.

Prosecutors say they were close to carrying out their plan when they were arrested in August 2006 and that they had created "martyrdom" videos to be shown after the suicide-bombings were carried out.

The alleged plan's unraveling quickly led to tough new restrictions on the amount of liquids and gels airline passengers could take in their carry-on luggage — restrictions which remain in place.

Three of the men — Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27 — admitted they planned to set off bombs, just not aboard planes bound from London's Heathrow to North America, the jury was told.

They and two other defendants — Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30 — have also admitted to "conspiring to cause a public nuisance" by publishing videos threatening suicide bomb attacks.

Ali and Sarwar told the court they were assembling the weapons as part of a publicity stunt to promote an anti-Western documentary which would feature the videos. Ali said he hoped a small, non-fatal, bombing — at Britain's Houses of Parliament, at an oil refinery, or at an airport — would jolt Londoners and draw attention to his movie.

"We did not want to kill or injure anyone," Ali told Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London last month. He added that he wanted to set off something "that would be considered serious and credible, something to generate that mass media attention."

Jurors still need to rule on whether the eight defendants are guilty of plotting to murder hundreds of people by using their bombs aboard planes. Their trial is drawing to a close. If convicted, the men face maximum sentences of life imprisonment.

Bombings as terror stunt. That's right, we're supposed to believe these terrorists that they were hoping for small non fatal bombings at sensitive locations like government offices, oil refineries (where small explosions can lead to much much bigger ones), or at airports (where again, a small explosion can lead to bigger ones) would be attention grabbers for a movie.

This is nothing but spin on their part to divert attention from the fact that they were assembling bombs and were intent upon using them. They want people to think they were using them as advertising to create buzz, but they succeeded in getting law enforcement's attention.