Investigations soon revealed that a larger terrorist cell network existed beyond the core group from Crawley. New plotters had been identified, including Anthony Garcia, age 27, from Ilford, Essex, Nabeel Hussain, aged 20, from Horley, Surrey, and Salahuddin Amin, aged 30, from Luton, Bedfordshire. In addition, on the other side of the Atlantic, Mohammed Junaid Babar, a 31-year-old Pakistani-born US citizen, was identified as part of the CREVICE cell conspirators (
Cowan, 2006). With a melancholy irony that is all too familiar to terrorist investigators, it would later be revealed that Babar had flown to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans several days after 9/11, even though his mother had been caught up in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack (
Cowan, 2006). She had escaped from the first of the Twin Towers where she worked, when it was hit by Al Qaeda suicide bombers. Operation CREVICE revealed that Babar had traveled first to London, where he stayed for three or four days before traveling to Pakistan, where he met members of the Crawley-based terrorist cell. Another terrorist plotter, Canadian Mohammed Momin Khawaja, aged 29, from Ottawa, was also identified. Khawaja was assisting the terrorist plot by designing a remote-control detonator for the fertilizer-based device (
News, 2008). The discovery of Khawaja and Babar added a new trans-Atlantic dimension for the operatives investigating Operation CREVICE. New information was discovered from the intrusive surveillance of Jawad Akbar’s home in Uxbridge, West London, on February 22, 2004 (
Laville, 2006). During a conversation with cell leader Khyam, Babar appeared to suspect that they were under surveillance, saying, “Bruv, you do not think this place is bugged, do you?” “No, I do not think this place is bugged, bruv,” replied Khyam (
Laville, 2006). During the recording Akbar suggested that the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London would be a soft target, saying, “What about easy stuff where you do not need no experience and nothing, and you could get a job, yeah, like for example the biggest nightclub in central London where no one can even turn round and say ‘Oh they were innocent,’ those slags dancing around?” (
Laville, 2006). Akbar later suggested that the UK nightclubs and bars were “really, really big,” asking his fellow conspirators, “Trust me, then you will get the public talking yeah, yeah … if you went for the social structure where every Tom, Dick, and Harry goes on a Saturday night, yeah, that would be crazy, crazy thing, man” (
Laville, 2006). Khyam stated, “The explosion in the clubs, yeah,
that’s fine, bro, that’s not a problem. The training for that is available … to get them into the Ministry of Sound really isn’t difficult” (
Laville, 2006). During the recorded conversation the men also discussed the use of terror in the jihad. Akbar stated, “I still agree with you on the point that terror is the best way and even the
Qur’an says it, isn’t it?” (
Laville, 2006).
As the plotters advanced their preparations, the police and Security Service operatives monitored their activities as part of a long game, waiting for the moment to move to executive action and arrest the cell members. Significant amounts of data were now being collected by MI5 and police investigative teams. The rich mix of open source information and covert intelligence data, all of which needed to be recorded, assessed, prioritized, and acted upon, was unprecedented in its volume for a single counterterrorism operation that now had international dimensions.