Plot Against Financial Sites

NEW YORK — Three men have been indicted in connection to an alleged plot to attack financial institutions in New York, northern New Jersey and Washington, D.C., the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The suspects — Dhiran Barot (search), Nadeem Tarmohammed (search) and Qaisar Shaffi (search) — were arrested last year in England and are still being held there.
Barot, 32, is a Briton of Indian descent who converted from Hinduism to Islam some years ago. U.S. officials say he is a senior Al Qaeda (search) figure known within the organization by the aliases Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani. Officials believe he was in the United States under orders from Usama bin Laden (search).
However, Al Qaeda is not mentioned in the eight-page indictment.
Tarmohammed, 26, was charged at the time of the arrests, along with Barot, with possessing plans of the Prudential building (search) in Newark, N.J..
Shaffi, 25, also was charged at the time with possessing an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook" on the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.
The Justice Department tentatively scheduled a press conference for Tuesday afternoon. The indictment came from a grand jury in the Southern District of New York.
The new charges against the three include conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism, providing and concealing material support to terrorism and conspiracy to damage and destroy buildings involved in interstate and foreign commerce.
Barot, Shaffi and Tarmohammed are accused of plotting to use weapons such as improvised explosive devises and bombs on U.S. soil between 1998 and 2004. The grand jury also charges them with using video surveillance on financial buildings and surrounding neighborhoods as part of a terrorist plot in April 2001.
According to the indictment, Barot served as lead instructor at a jihad training camp in Afghanistan. He is also accused of applying to a college in New York in 2000 in order to conceal the true purpose of his trips to the United States. He never actually enrolled or attended any classes.
The indictment describes two trips the defendants allegedly took into the United States from London in 2000 and 2001. At one point during one of these trips — April 3, 2001 — Shaffi allegedly became ill and had to be treated at a New York hospital.
British authorities arrested the three last year as part of a separate terrorism investigation, but found evidence the men had monitored the New York Stock Exchange (search) and the Citigroup Center (search) in Manhattan, as well as the Prudential building in Newark.
Sources close to the investigation said Washington would seek extradition of the suspects after British authorities wrapped up a case charging them of plotting attacks in the United Kingdom.
In late July of last year, the Department of Homeland Security raised the color-coded terror alert to orange for U.S. financial centers after finding evidence terrorists were examining the New York-area buildings as well as the International Monetary Fund (search) and World Bank (search) buildings in Washington, D.C.
Officials later told FOX News that other potential targets included the American Stock Exchange (search), Nasdaq, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros., Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank, Bear Stearns, AIG, MetLife and JP Morgan Chase.
Police and other security personnel set up concrete barriers and roadblocks outside the buildings after they were put on high alert. Employees were subject to searches and ID checks on their way to and from work.
Homeland Security officials later acknowledged that intelligence pointing to the financial institutions plot was possibly up to four years old, but stressed that Al Qaeda has demonstrated patience in carrying out attacks.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (search) also said that some information discovered had been updated as recently as January of 2004.
The threat level was lowered to yellow in November.