Associated Press
April 12, 2005

Three Indicted on Terror Charges in U.S.

By Mark Sherman

WASHINGTON -- Three men have been indicted on charges they plotted to
attack financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington.

A four-count indictment unsealed Tuesday accuses Dhiran Barot, Nadeem
Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi of scouting the New York Stock Exchange
and Citicorp Building in New York City, the Prudential Building in
Newark, New Jersey, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
in Washington, DC.

The three men, already in custody in England, were charged with three
conspiracy counts and providing material support to terrorists.

U.S. officials say that Barot is a senior al-Qaida figure, known
variously as Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi, and Issa
al-Britani, who scouted prominent financial targets in the United
States at the behest of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Prosecutors say the men conducted surveillance on the buildings
between August 2000 and April 2001, including video surveillance in
Manhattan around April 2001. U.S. officials have previously described
detailed surveillance photos and documents, which they believe came
from Barot, that were found on a computer that was seized in Pakistan
last summer.

That information prompted the government, in August, to raise the risk
of a terrorist attack to "high" for those specific financial
institutions. The color-coded threat level for the rest of the nation
remained at yellow, or elevated, the middle of a five-point scale.

Federal authorities raised the threat level during a summer of unease
over the possibility that terrorists might launch attacks on the
political conventions or otherwise try to disrupt the presidential
election. In March, bombs on trains in Madrid killed 191 people days
before Spanish elections.

Critics had ascribed the elevated threat level to political
calculations by the Bush administration.

The men were among eight people arrested in England on
terrorism-related charges in August.

Barot, 32, was charged there with possessing reconnaissance plans for
the U.S. institutions and notebooks containing information on
explosives, poisons, chemicals, and related matters "of a kind likely
to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

Tarmohammed, 26, was charged there, along with Barot, with possessing
plans of the Prudential building. Shaffi, 25, also was charged in
Britain with possessing an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook" on
the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.

The U.S. intends to seek their extradition once the British
prosecutions are completed, Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia
Scolinos said.

Their trial in England is expected to begin in January, according to
the Crown Prosecution Service.

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