Updated 14:59
The al-Qaida operative who planned to blow up landmark London hotels using limos packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails, and plotted to attack the NY Stock Exchange and the World Bank was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison, according to Associated Press.
Dhiren Barot, 34, a Briton of Indian descent planned back-to-back attacks to bring maximum death and destruction, newspaper The Mirror reported. He had got a job with Air Malta in London and in 1992, aged 20, converted to Islam.
By 1995 he was becoming a militant and spent months at a terrorist training camp in Kashmir, India, and kept a diary of his experiences, the court heard.
His aim was to wipe out hundreds of people in London with a radioactive blast then watch thousands more die from cancer due to the fallout. The toxic dust would also ensure the capital was a no-go area for years.
The Mirror added that the one-time Air Malta ticketing clerk wrote of the Thames' plot: "Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself. It would cause pandemonium what with the explosions, flooding, drowning, etc. that would occur."
He had similar plans for high-profile buildings in New York, Washington DC and Newark in New Jersey.
Barot had admitted conspiracy to cause mass murder and appeared before a sentencing hearing at Woolwich crown court, South East London, on Monday.
Barot, a chief planner for Osama bin Laden who answered to terrorist masters in Pakistan, also plotted to detonate limos packed with gas cylinders and explosives parked under top London hotels, including the Savoy and the Berkeley.
His other intended strikes were on a Tube train under the Thames, the Heathrow Express rail service and Kings Cross and Waterloo stations. The convert to Islam also wanted to blow up hijacked petrol tankers and even use a plane.
Prosecutor Edmund Lawson QC said Barot was "a member or close associate of the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation".
He added: "The plan was to carry out massive explosions here and in the US, the principal object being to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people without warning. The gas limos project might be seen as the culmination of Barot's murderous plans."
The Mirror further reported that MI5 and the FBI had him under surveillance for years. He was finally arrested in August 2004 because security forces were unsure when he would strike and feared he was "too dangerous" to be at large.
They found a diary, letters, documents and computer files in London and Pakistan relating to the potential attacks.
In one letter, Barot talked about a "small unit operating around the clock". He also had documents about the gas limo project in which he referred to a "sleeper cell".
Barot had additional files entitled Final Presentation and Hazard, and Radioactive Children and a shopping list of electrical items which could be used in a bomb.
He had emigrated to Britain from India with his family in 1972. They settled in Kingsbury, North West London, and Barot got good GCSEs and trained in tourism.
Mr Lawson said: "The book revealed he had undertaken intensive training in the use of weapons like the Kalashnikov AK47 and grenades and had received detailed advice in the use of poisons."
His plan was to create "another black day for the enemies of Islam and a victory for the Muslims".
He travelled to Pakistan in early 2004 to get approval and cash for his plots.
He was an expert in counter surveillance and knew police were watching him. He once drove from London to South Wales to use a internet cafe. In London, he moved address every few weeks to avoid detection.
Barot used false identities and posed as a student to use university libraries which held architects' plans of key buildings and to download information on chemicals.
In other documents found after his arrest, he talked of "emulating" the 2004 Madrid train bombing. He called the atrocity in which nearly 200 died "a respectable project,".
He had made trips to America in 2000 and took film footage of the New Stock Exchange and other buildings which he hid on the end of a Die Hard with a Vengeance DVD.
But after the 9/11 atrocity in 2001 he switched his focus to London.
Officers found encrypted notes on his computer outlining his intentions.
He planned to buy thousands of smoke detectors and remove a tiny radioactive element to make his dirty bomb.
Lawyers for Barot insist that he did not have funding or bomb-making materials at the time he was caught, The Mirror said.
According to Associated Press, Barot is wanted in the United States and Yemen on separate terror-related charges.
After his sentencing, he will be transferred to the United States to face a four-count indictment, which includes a charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, according to a spokesman for the Home Office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
Under the alias Issa al-Britani, Barot was named in the report of the U.S. commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as an associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 planner.
The Associated Press, The British Broadcasting Corp., and Times Newspapers Ltd. successfully challenged a court ruling that threatened to prevent news media reporting details of Barot's sentencing hearing.
Butterfield had ruled that publishing details of the case could prejudice trials of Barot's seven co-defendants, scheduled to take place in London next year.
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