Wife of airliner bomb plotter denies failing to raise alarm over plan to down jets

Airliner plotter’s wife denies withholding details

LONDON — The wife of a man convicted of plotting to bomb trans-Atlantic flights and kill thousands of people was aware of his murderous plans but failed to alert police, a British prosecutor said Tuesday.

Cossor Ali, 28, had supported her husband’s attempts to target passengers aboard at least seven jetliners in a major terrorist plot thwarted by British authorities in 2006, prosecutor Richard Whittam said in an opening statement in the suspect’s trial at a London court.

Plotters intended to blow up passenger jets using liquid explosives smuggled aboard in soda bottles. Discovery of the plan prompted an immediate ban on taking some liquids aboard flights, inconveniencing passengers across the world.

In September, Abdulla Ahmed Ali — the plot’s ringleader — was convicted and jailed for a minimum of 40 years, one of the longest sentences ever handed out by a U.K. court.

Whittam told the court that his wife was aware of his plan, but failed to notify police and instead encouraged her husband’s ambition to lead the proposed suicide attacks.

“Cossor Ali knew that her husband intended to become a martyr, which, in the context of her relationship with him, her knowledge of his beliefs and the beliefs that he had shared with her, meant that he intended to commit an act of terrorism that involved his own death,” Whittam told the court.

Ali denies a charge of failing to disclose information about her husband’s terrorism plans, an offense which carries a punishment of up to five years in jail.

She claims she was unaware of her husband’s intentions, and had no idea he had conspired with several other extremists over the plot.

During a previous trial, Judge Richard Henriques said the plotters intended “to perpetrate a terrorist outrage that would stand alongside the events of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Prosecutors said the suspects had targeted seven flights from London’s Heathrow airport to New York, Washington, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal and two to Chicago. Authorities estimate that, if successful, about 2,000 passengers would have died.

Whittam told the court Tuesday that Cossor Ali wrote an entry in a diary in 2005 in which she said she hoped her husband would attain “the highest level of Shahada,” or martyrdom.

British and U.S. security officials have said previously that the airliner plot was directly linked to al-Qaida and guided by Islamic militants in Pakistan, who sent instructions to the group via coded e-mail messages.