Heathrow faced poison terror

2005-04-17 15:54

London - A busy train service to the capital's Heathrow airport was to be the target of a ricin poison plot involving an Algerian suspected of al-Qaeda links who was sentenced last week to 17 years in prison, The Sunday Telegraph said.

"This was going to be our September 11 - our Madrid," the newspaper quoted a senior metropolitan police official as saying.

"There is no doubt about it, if this had come off this would have been one of al-Qaeda's biggest strikes," it added.

According to the newspaper, Kamel Bourgass, 32, and his accomplices planned to plant ricin on hand rails and in toilets on the Heathrow Express trains.

"It would have caused chaos and panic in London's public transport system," a Whitehall source told the weekly.

"Even if it did not kill anyone - which it could well have done - it would have achieved its purpose," the source said, adding that maps of the Heathrow train route were found at the home of an associate of Bourgass.

Earlier on Sunday, Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told BBC television that there was "real clarity now that al-Qaeda affiliates are targeting Britain".

Bourgass was found guilty of conspiring to "commit a public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or explosives", after one of the biggest anti-terror operations ever to be mounted in Britain.

On Wednesday Bourgass, who is already serving a life sentence for murdering a police officer, was ordered jailed for planning the attacks with an array of home-made poisons including ricin - a deadly toxin made from castor beans - cyanide, botulism, nicotine poison and potato poison.

- AFP