Saddam Hussein's son Uday hatched a plot to assassinate the leader of the Iraqi opposition in London in April 2000, according to a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war.

The abortive conspiracy called for an elite recruit in the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group to kill Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was based in London.

The plot is outlined in Iraqi memos that detail Saddam’s support for a wide network of Middle Eastern terror groups, including Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda. They include a 1993 cooperation deal with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became second-in-command of Al-Qaeda when the two groups merged in 2001.

There is, however, no evidence of the firm link to Osama Bin Laden that the Bush administration had claimed as one of the justifications for attacking Iraq: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ [ie, direct connection] between Saddam’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda.”

A British official said this weekend: “Nothing we have seen has changed our prewar position that there was no link between Saddam and Bin Laden.”

However, there was strong evidence of Uday Hussein planning to order the Fedayeen, which he set up in the 1990s as answerable only to himself or his father, to carry out assassinations and bombings in London.

In a possible recognition that Britain would be one of the most difficult targets to attack, officials ordered that only the best recruits should be based there.

One memo from a senior Fedayeen official refers to orders given by Uday at two meetings in May 1999. The dictator’s son had ordered officials to “start planning special operations in the centres of the traitors’ symbols in the fields of London / Iran / self-ruled areas [Kurdish northern Iraq]”.

The operations were to be known by the codename Blessed July and would be backed by the Iraqi intelligence service, the Da’irat al-Mukhabarat al-Amah. Agents in London were to carry poison suicide capsules, with orders to use them if captured.

The official then listed Uday’s orders on how to prepare the recruits: “Select 50 Fedayeen martyrs according to the required specifications. Admit them to the Intelligence School to prepare them for their duties.

“After passing their tests they will be selected for their targets as follows. The top 10 will work in the European field – London. The next 10 will work in the Iranian field. The third 10 will work in the self-ruled area.”

The plot to attack Chalabi in April 2000 is the only example of a specific attack planned in London. It called for a Fedayeen operative to make his way across Europe “for the purpose of executing a sanctimonious [sic] national duty, which is eliminating hostile agent Ahmed Chalabi”.

The Fedayeen was later to prove one of the few Iraqi forces that offered tough resistance to the 2003 invasion, but on this occasion its operation failed because the agent was unable to obtain a visa to enter Britain.

The documents show that officials at the Iraqi embassy in London had a stock of weapons that Saddam had ordered them to destroy in July 2002. The embassy asked Baghdad for advice “regarding how to destroy weapons in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, 19 other guns with ammunition, and silencers”.

Saddam had extensive cooperation with Middle Eastern terrorist groups. One memo refers to an agreement with Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1991 Gulf war for attacks against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, which was taking part in the operation to free Kuwait. The memo, dated March 1993, says that whereas Iraq had promised to finance and train Egyptian Islamic Jihad for the attacks, it was now prepared only to provide the group with finance.

The study’s assessment of Iraq’s lack of links to Al-Qaeda represents a final acceptance by the Pentagon that it was wrong to make such claims.

MoD in ‘secret justice’ over deaths

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been accused of operating “secret justice” after issuing a court gagging order to conceal how Whitehall cost-cutting might have caused the deaths of 10 servicemen in Iraq.

The MoD has demanded that key parts of the inquest next week into the crash of an RAF Hercules in Iraq in 2005 be held in secret on grounds of “national security”.

Nine British servicemen and one Australian airman died in the tragedy. It was the largest single loss of life of British forces in Iraq.

Their lawyers said they might challenge the gagging order in the coroner’s court this week because its real purpose appeared to protect the government from political embarrassment.

The secret MoD papers are understood to cover its decision not to spend an extra £50,000 buying a fire suppressant foam system for each Hercules plane in Iraq.

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