[2] It was discovered and disrupted by the combined efforts of the security services of the United States, UK, Germany and France.
[2] According to Der Spiegel, the first information came from a 36-year-old German man from Hamburg identified as Ahmad Siddiqui, who was detained by authorities in July, 2010, while attempting to fly from Kabul to Europe.
[11][12] According to German intelligence officials, in early 2009, Sidiqi and 10 others left Hamburg for the tribal areas of Pakistan where 8 of them joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
One European counterterrorism official said Sidiqi told his interrogators that Naamen Meziche, a French citizen of Algerian descent had assumed a planning role in the terrorist plot which Osama bin Laden himself approved.
[13] On 3 October 2010, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint bulletin warning that terror attacks were being plotted against targets in Europe.
On 4 October 2010 a U.S. drone fired a missile at a building in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan and killed 11 suspected militants believed to be members of Jihad al Islami.
In early September 2011 in Quetta, al-Mauretani was arrested by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence with Frontier Corps Balochistan and assistance from U.S.
"[1] The U.S. government issued an advisory[24] asking that citizens "take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling" to or within Europe in response to this plot.
[27][28] In an unusual move Japan also issued a travel alert warning its citizens of the risks of a terrorist attack in Europe.