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FACTBOX: The transatlantic airline bomb plot case

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LONDON | Fri Apr 4, 2008 7:38am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Eight Britons went on trial on Thursday accused of involvement in an Islamist plot to blow up transatlantic aircraft bound for North America from London, using homemade bombs.

Here are some of the allegations outlined by lead prosecutor Peter Wright at Woolwich Crown Court in east London.

-- A memory stick owned by one of the suspects held detailed information about flights from London Heathrow to U.S. and Canadian cities, most of them between August and October 2006.

Among them were United Airlines services to San Francisco, Chicago and Washington; Air Canada flights to Montreal and Toronto; and American Airlines flights to New York and Chicago.

-- A diary taken from one of the suspects, Abdullah Ahmad Ali, contained what the prosecution said was a blueprint for the plot.

The bombs would have been made from liquid explosives based on hydrogen peroxide mixed with an organic component such as tang, a substance used to make soft drinks.

These were to be smuggled on board the planes in 500 ml bottles of Lucozade or Oasis drinks. The explosive mixture would have been injected into the bottles through the base, so they would look unopened.

The bombs would have been set off using a homemade detonator, a chemical called hexamethylene triperoxide diamine available from household and commercial ingredients, Wright said. This would have been hidden in hollowed-out batteries and fired by a power source such as a disposable camera.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Andrew Hough)

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