Iran-linked terrorists caught stockpiling explosives in north-west London Ben Riley-Smith
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/09/iran-linked-terrorists-caught-stockpiling-explosives-north-west/
Terrorists linked to Iran were caught stockpiling tonnes of explosive materials on the outskirts of London in a secret British bomb factory, The Telegraph can reveal.
Radicals linked to Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group, stashed thousands of disposable ice packs containing ammonium nitrate – a common ingredient in homemade bombs.
The plot was uncovered by MI5 and the Metropolitan Police in the autumn of 2015, just months after the UK signed up to the Iran nuclear deal. Three metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate was discovered – more than was used in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and damaged hundreds of buildings.
Police raided four properties in north-west London – three businesses and a home – and a man in his 40s was arrested on suspicion of plotting terrorism.
The man was eventually released without charge. Well-placed sources said the plot had been disrupted by a covert intelligence operation rather than seeking a prosecution.
The discovery was so serious that David Cameron and Theresa May, then the prime minister and home secretary, were personally briefed on what had been found.
Yet for years the nefarious activity has been kept hidden from the public, including MPs who were debating whether to fully ban Hizbollah, until now.
It raises questions about whether senior UK government figures chose not to reveal the plot in part because they were invested in keeping the Iran nuclear deal afloat.
The disclosure follows a three-month investigation by The Telegraph in which more than 30 current and former officials in Britain, America and Cyprus were approached and court documents were obtained.
One well-placed source described the plot as “proper organised terrorism”, while another said enough explosive materials were stored to do “a lot of damage”.
Ben Wallace, the security minister, said: “The Security Service and police work tirelessly to keep the public safe from a host of national security threats. Necessarily, their efforts and success will often go unseen.”
The Telegraph understands the discovery followed a tip-off from a foreign government. To understand what they were facing, agents from MI5 and officers from Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command launched a covert operation.
It became clear, according to well-placed sources, that the UK storage was not in isolation but part of an international Hizbollah plot to lay the groundwork for future attacks.
The group had previously been caught storing ice packs in Thailand. And in 2017, two years after the London bust, a New York Hizbollah member would appear to seek out a foreign ice pack manufacturer.
Why ice packs?
Ice packs provide the perfect cover, according to sources – seemingly harmless and easy to transport. Proving beyond doubt they were purchased for terrorism was tricky.
But the most relevant case was in Cyprus, where a startlingly similar plot had been busted just months before the discovery in London. There, a 26-year-old man called Hussein Bassam Abdallah, a dual Lebanese and Canadian national, was caught caching more than 65,000 ice packs in a basement. During interrogation he admitted to being a member of Hizbollah’s military wing, saying he had once been trained to use an AK47 assault rifle.
Abdallah said the 8.2 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored was for terrorist attacks. He pleaded guilty and was given a six-year prison sentence in June 2015.
In Abdallah’s luggage police found two photocopies of a forged British passport. Cypriot police say they were not the foreign government agency that tipped Britain off to the London cell.
But they did offer assistance when made aware of the UK case, meeting their British counterparts and sharing reports on what they had uncovered.
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