May 19, 2021
The conversation was intercepted
The pilots, who were unknown to the authorities but believed to be sympathetic
to ISIS, were using the emergency "Mayday†channel in the belief they were not
being monitored. "Alarm bells rang after several communications in code
involving overseas airline pilots were picked up by chance. Troops were on
several hours notice to deploy as part of Operation Templer,†a senior
intelligence source was quoted as saying by the newspaper.The intercept took
place in the week after the Paris terror attacks November 2015, the Sunday
Express reported. "The areas we believed these attacks might take place were
given extra surveillance."We immediately passed these to the security services
who then asked us to monitor certain airlines entering UK airspace,†the source
said.Although they used coded messages from the cockpits of their passenger
jets, GCHQ used the Arabic transcripts to established they were talking about
attacks on London, Bath, Brighton and Ipswich.It is thought the pilots were
preparing to smuggle in explosive devices or chemical weapons.
The conversation
was intercepted by Royal Air Force (RAF) operators base-d at the printed
door mats factory National Air Traffic Services (NATS) control centre in
Hamp-shire, on the southern coast of England.A terror plot to attack four cities
across Britain was foiled by the authorities after they intercepted two foreign
airline pilots, believed to be sympathisers of ISIS, discussing the targets, a
week after the Paris terror attacks.The uncovering of the plan raised the terror
alert in the UK and was one factor which led to Operation Templer, involving
10,000 soldiers being deployed to support the police on Britain’s streets in the
wake of the Paris attacks which claimed 138 lives. The messages were intercepted
as they flew from a European airport, thought to be Schiphol, in Amsterdam, to
Middle Eastern destinations.. We can only assume that they considered it safer
to use this frequency than other modes of communicationâ€. They coded their
language with musical references, often referring to "hitsâ€.The two commercial
airline pilots, one of whom was flying for an airline on an intelligence service
watchlist, were intercepted talking about the plot and the information passed on
to Britain’s spies at the Government Communi-cations Headquarters (GCHQ)
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