"The Cold-Eyed Certainty of the Fanatic"
Sean O'Neill, Crime & Security Editor The eight young men sitting in the dock presented a picture of respectability. They were dressed in suits and ties, or smart sweaters, and each had combed his hair carefully or trimmed his beard neatly. But these young Britons, aged from 23 to 29, had allegedly planned and volunteered to take part in a terrorist suicide mission that would have rivalled the barbarity of September 11. The “plot” had been finessed in the East London suburb of Walthamstow and the town of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, but its impact would have been global. The intention, it was alleged at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday, was to detonate liquid explosive bombs on seven transatlantic airliners that would have all been in mid-flight. Around 2,000 passengers and crew could have died. The selected flights would all have left Heathrow over a period of 215 minutes en route for Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Montreal and Toronto. The prosecution said that...