British spies wear Lennon and McCartney-style wigs to testify at U.S. terror trial

Spies working for Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency donned wigs and makeup to testify against a Pakistani Al-Qaeda suspect on trial in New York for allegedly plotting to blow up a British shopping centre. Five surveillance officers, identified by four-digit numbers, detailed how they followed the defendant, Abid Naseer, in March and April 2009 in the northern English cities of Manchester and Liverpool as part of Operation Pathway. District judge Raymond Dearie prohibited artists at the federal court in Brooklyn from drawing their faces, ordering that their faces be left blank and their haircuts generic in any court sketches.

The impact, the terror that this would have created in these particular cities would have been devastating to those cities’ economies, to just the mindset of these people carrying on day to day.

Former FBI agent Manny Gomez

The witnesses were also permitted to enter the court room Tuesday from a side entrance, precluding any possibility of mingling with members of the press and public, who use the main public entrance into the gallery. Three of the men, as well as the one woman agent, wore heavy black and dark-brown wigs and partially shielded their eyes behind spectacles. Two of the men had helmet-style hair somewhat similar to John Lennon and Paul McCartney from their Beatles days. U.S. government prosecutors say Naseer helped Al-Qaeda plan an assault on the shopping centre as part of coordinated attacks that also targeted the New York subway and a Danish newspaper.

World Abid Naseer