10th October 2006, 15:35
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Rep Power: 2  |  Terrorist plan to kill cricketers
kinda old news, but this is seriously f***ed Quote:
FIONA HUDSON LONDON
October 09, 2006 12:15am
Terrorist plan to kill cricketers
THE men who bombed London's public transport system last year plotted to kill the Australian and English cricket teams.
They planned to spray nerve gas into changerooms in the Ashes series, a friend of the terrorists claims.
Al-Qaida commanders initially ordered the suicide bombers to get jobs at the Edgbaston cricket ground in Birmingham and attack the teams in the second Test, the source told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.
The men had been instructed to let off sarin gas, a highly toxic nerve agent regarded as one of the world's most dangerous chemical weapons, near the players of both sides. One of them, cricket fan Shehzad Tanweer, however, objected to the Ashes plot and, instead, the terror cell went ahead with the July 7 tube and bus bombings in London that claimed 52 lives and injured more than 700 people.
Play in the second Test at Edgbaston began as scheduled on August 4 and England went on to win by two runs. Bombers Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, and Tanweer, 22, are believed to have received the initial instructions to assassinate the players while attending an al-Qaida training camp in northern Kashmir in December, 2004.
The Sunday Times article quoted a man using the pseudonym Ahmed Hafiz.
He was a friend of bus bomber Hasib Hussain who detonated his deadly device at Tavistock Square.
Hafiz said he received information about the Ashes plot from members of his extended family, who are involved in running the Kashmir terror training camp.
Tanweer and Khan had a fist-fight over the cricket plot, he claimed.
"Tanweer had (Khan) in a headlock and the fight had to be broken up by the chaperone," Hafiz told the Sunday Times. But Hafiz said that even after it was decided to go ahead with the July 7 attacks, the cricket plot remained an option.
"It was always there, as Plan B," he said.
Hafiz claimed Khan emerged as the ringleader of the July 7 bombers after he impressed camp commanders in Kashmir by ceremonially sacrificing a bull.
A senior British anti-terrorism officer said yesterday police would be keen to interview Hafiz.
"We know Khan and Tanweer went to Pakistan, but we still don't know which training camp they went to," the investigator said.
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