British arms dealer 'led dirty bomb plot'

A British man is facing charges of plotting to supply a terrifying crude nuclear device to al Qaeda terrorists in America.

London-based arms dealer Hemant Lakhani allegedly offered to provide a socalled "dirty bomb" capable of spreading radioactive contamination over a major city.

The 68-year-old businessman is also accused of promising to sell 50 anti-aircraft missiles specifically to shoot down commercial airliners filled with passengers.

American prosecutors claim he discussed how best to use the weapons to "terrorise" the United States and suggested the biggest impact would be created "if 10 to 15 commercial aircraft were shot down simultaneously across the country".

But the "customers" were actually an FBI sting team who targeted Lakhani after an operation involving British, US and Russian intelligence agencies.

Indian-born Lakhani was arrested in August at Newark airport, New Jersey, along with two American middlemen who are said to have been unaware he was plotting to sell illegal weapons to terrorists.

At the time he was said to have offered to sell anti-aircraft weapons, radar equipment, tanks and personnel carriers.

The claim that he also offered a dirty bomb has been revealed by prosecutors who unveiled a list of charges carrying sentences of up to 20 years.

A dirty bomb is the crudest and simplest nuclear weapon, which uses conventional high explosive to scatter radioactive material.

It is not capable of causing mass devastation but is seen as one of the ultimate terror weapons because of the panic and chaos it would cause.

Although the blast would kill few people, many might die later from resulting cancer. Cleaning up the aftermath would bring a major city to a standstill, causing an economic crisis.

Lakhani is alleged to have proposed to supply several tons of C4 high explosive that could be packed around radioactive waste.

He will appear in court within days, American government lawyer Christopher Christie said.

"I feel more strongly today than I did in August, that the arrest of Mr Lakhani had made the country a safer place," Mr Christie said. "He was not just a businessman looking to make a buck. This was someone who believed that American citizens should be attacked and killed."

Lakhani's lawyer has denied that the arms dealer was a member of any terrorist group, saying he was set up by the FBI.

The charges would be a coup for the US war against terrorism following a series of setbacks.

In a major blow, the man heading the US-led search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq resigned after just eight months. The resignation of David Kay, a CIA adviser, fuelled speculation that the Iraq Survey Group has abandoned hope of finding weapons or even hard evidence that they existed at the time of the invasion in March.

In another upset, the Bush administration lost two legal cases in its crackdown on terrorists.

An appeal court ordered it to free an American man arrested on American soil and accused of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate-a dirty bomb. The US government wanted to detain the man, Jose Padilla, as an enemy combatant and send him to Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, for interrogation and military trial. He will face a criminal trial instead at a civilian court.

Earlier, the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that detainees at Camp Delta should have access to lawyers and US courts.

Judges also said that the indefinite detention of around 600 prisoners captured during the invasion of Afghanistan last year was unconstitutional.

About nine British citizens are believed to be held at the prison camp, including Moazzam Begg, who is said to have confessed to a plot to drop anthrax on the House of Commons using an unmanned drone.

The British and American governments are said to be close to a deal that would release two of the nine without charges, while the others would serve sentences in British prisons after pleading guilty at a special US military tribunal.