U.S. officials are about to announce indictments against three men charged with plotting to attack major U.S. financial buildings.
Media reports identify the suspects as Dhiren Barot, Qaisar Shaffi, and Nadeem Tarmohammed. U.S. officials say Mr. Barot is a high-level al-Qaida figure also known as Esa al-Hindi.
The men are being held in Britain, where they were arrested along with five other terrorist suspects last year.
The suspects allegedly conducted surveillance of the financial buildings in 2000 and 2001. The buildings included the New York Stock Exchange, New York's Citicorp Building, the Prudential Building in Newark, New Jersey, and the International Monetary Fund in Washington.
Discovery of the surveillance led U.S. officials to raise the terrorism alert level around the buildings last August.
Some information for this report provided by AP and Bloomberg.