US authorities thwarted a plot to stage a suicide bombing of a rail tunnel in New York later this year and three suspects are in custody abroad, one of them in Lebanon, US officials said this evening.
But they said the plot was still in the planning stages and that those involved had not done any reconnaissance or obtained materials to stage an attack. An FBI official said none of the suspects had ever been in the United States.
US authorities worked with intelligence agencies in six foreign countries to crack the planned attack on the PATH rail system that links Manhattan and New Jersey under the Hudson River, said Mark Mershon, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI New York Field Office.
"This is a plot that would have involved martyrdom, explosives and certain of the tubes that connect New Jersey with Lower Manhattan. We're not discussing the modality beyond that," Mr Mershon told a news conference.
The FBI said a "terrorist network" was disrupted, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said law enforcement acted early enough "so we were not at a point in which we were concerned that something might happen imminently."
Mr Mershon said: "We believe we have what I'll call eight principal players. And that we have them largely identified." He added: "Some are in custody, one of those has been charged formally in Lebanon."
"It's our understanding at this point that none of the individuals who are, as we say, principal players in this plot have been in the United States, and they are certainly not here now," he said.
A Lebanese government source in Beirut said authorities there had arrested Assem Hammoud, also known as Amir al-Andalousi, and said he was "a suspect in a plot to bomb a tunnel in New York."
"After questioning he confessed ... that he was planning to travel to Pakistan for four months training and that the date for the attack was decided to be late in 2006," Lebanon's Interior Ministry said in a statement.
An initial report of the plot in New York's Daily News newspaper had said it targeted the car-carrying Holland Tunnel with a bomb.
The newspaper said the intent was to flood the Wall Street financial district, but experts said such a blast would not have flooded Lower Manhattan. Wall Street is some two miles (three km) from the tunnel, which is dug under bedrock and reinforced with concrete and steel.