Wearing garish wigs and glasses, a parade of British secret agents brought a unique touch of international intrigue to a normally staid Brooklyn courtroom Tuesday.
Testifying in the trial of accused al Qaeda terrorist Abid Naseer, a cohort of two men who plotted to blow up New York’s subways, the five operatives from Great Britain’s famous MI5 agency were allowed to shroud their identities with heavy make up and an assortment of glasses, beards and hair pieces.
In accents that varied from cockney to northern English, the secret agent men, and one woman, described weeks of surveillance they conducted on Naseer in 2009, including his movements to and from an Islamic center, a cybercafe and elsewhere, going grocery shopping and riding public buses.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie approved a request to disguise the agents after prosecutors said a “disclosure of their identities would pose a significant risk to their safety.”
Their appearance was so top secret that Dearie told court sketch artists that the agents could “only be depicted with blank faces and generic haircuts that are not detailed in a way that they depict the witnesses’ actual hair styles.”
The first disguised agent was introduced as “Officer 1661.” The 20-something man wore a dark suit, a thick black wig that awkwardly covered his ears, with glasses and a phony beard.
Naseer, who is serving as his own lawyer, questioned the spy himself, asking: “Did the defendant’s movements cause you any alarm or reason for suspicion?”
“No,” Officer 1661 said, with a northern English accent.
A 20-something female investigator called “Officer 1488” testified wearing a wig that looked like a “From Russia with Love”-era bob cut. She also had bright red lipstick, a blouse with a plunging neckline and some sky-high black heeled boots.
In a British accent, she relayed Naseer’s seemingly bland activities over two months that she followed him around the cities of Manchester and Liverpool in 2009.
Another agent, Officer 1498, also a man in about his 20s, observed Naseer and friends walking around Manchester and that at one point the suspect appeared “tense” after emerging from a supermarket.
The other agents were designated 1671, a young man with a dark beard and dark wig and 8848, an older man with a silver hair and no glasses.
The agents said they referred to Naseer by the code name “Small Panel” and they called two other targets of their terror investigation “Glass Pendant” and “Happy Skater.”
The agents all testified that Naseer spent most of his time at a local mosque and at a cyber cafe.
Naseer is charged with plotting to blow up a Manchester shopping mall as part of a global Al Qaeda conspiracy that also targeted the New York City subway.
While government prosecutors touted their testimony as critical to their case, the MI5 agents failed to produce any bombshell revelations. Naseer, who claims he has no jihadi ties, will testify on his own behalf tomorrow.
Prosecutors claim e-mails shows that Naseer and two men convicted of planning to bomb New York’s subways — Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay — were all under the direction of the same al-Qaeda handler.