The Savoy hotel, Waterloo station, the Heathrow Express and a Tube train under the Thames were on a hitlist of targets drawn up by a British al-Qaeda terrorist, a court was told yesterday.

Dhiren Barot will be sentenced today after he admitted planning “back-to-back” attacks on London, which he predicted would have created “a black day for the enemies of Islam”. His two-day hearing, the most significant terrorist case since 9/11, can be reported after The Times and the BBC succeeded at the Court of Appeal in having reporting restrictions lifted.

In detailed documents prepared for the approval of al-Qaeda’s leadership, Barot said that he hoped to emulate the Madrid train bombers who killed hundreds of commuters in March 2004.

One document, found on an encrypted computer disk, conveyed Barot’s enthusiasm about the damage that might be caused by a bomb in a Tube tunnel. He wrote: “Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself. This would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning, etc, that would result.”

Two projects, to build a radioactive “dirty bomb” and to pack stretch limousines with gas cylinders and explosives and detonate them in car parks beneath buildings, appeared to be close to fruition when discovered in summer 2004.

Edmund Lawson, QC, for the prosecution, told Woolwich Crown Court: “In early 2004 Barot travelled to Pakistan, and the obvious inference is that the purpose of the trip was to present the plans for approval and funding. The plans were costed and, most chillingly, they were drawn up as business plans . . . they involved the giving of no warnings and were designed to kill as many innocent civilians as possible.”

But Barot was thwarted by “an outstanding counter-terrorist operation”. He refused to answer questions at first, after being arrested but a “meticulous investigation” which continued for 2½ years in Britain, the United States, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines produced such a weight of evidence that Barot eventually pleaded guilty to planning to carry out mass murder in Britain and the US.

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