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NHS doctors 'turned from medicine to mass murder'
Justin Davenport, Crime Correspondent9 Oct 2008
Two Muslim doctors went from treating the ill to plotting mass murder by leaving car bombs in the West End, a court heard today.
The two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters and petrol and primed to explode were parked outside the nightclub, Tiger Tiger, in Haymarket and a busy bus stop nearby.
If they had detonated in the early hours of a busy Friday night, many people would have died, particularly young people enjoying a night out at the club, Woolwich crown court heard.
When the attacks failed, the terrorists turned their attention to a suicide mission at Glasgow Airport, but again, through good fortune, their Jeep 4x4 failed to explode.
Mohammed Asha, 27, a Jordanian national, and Bilal Abdulla, 29, from Iraq, both denied conspiracy to murder and cause explosions. They are accused of plotting to explode the car bombs in central London in the early hours of 30 June last year.
One, a green Mercedes, was left outside Tiger Tiger which, at the time, was packed with 500 night-clubbers.
The second, a blue Mercedes, was left in Cockspur Street near a bus stop and the court heard that one possible aim of the terrorists was to drive evacuees from one attack into a second.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC said Asha and Abdulla were part of a small cell of Islamic extremists working in Britain in the spring and summer of last year.
He said: “These men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and wholesale scale. The terrorists planned a series of explosions across Britain so the country would be gripped with fear on a scale similar to the 7/7 transport bombings in 2005.”
The court heard how two cars packed with gas canisters, petrol and large quantities of nails were parked in the West End in the early hours of 29 June 2007. The bombs were fitted with a mobile phone attached to a blub encased in match heads. When a call was received, it was designed to send a current to the bulb and the heat would ignite the matches and the fuel.
The bombers had prepared for a technical failure because two telephones were left in the car in case one failed.
However, the court heard that the devices failed to go off because there was not enough oxygen inside the car for the petrol and the gas to ignite.
The court also heard that Abdulla and another member of the team, Kafeel Ahmed who took part in the Glasgow attack where he sustained burns which killed him a month later, spent two days in London on a reconnaissance trip a month before the failed attacks.
The couple drove to the capital in a hired car from Abdulla's house in Paisley, Glasgow and stayed at a hotel on the Romford Road in Forest Gate.
Analysis of CCTV cameras and their credit card bills showed they drove around the Ludgate Circus area and visited a Starbucks in Leicester Square and a restaurant in Charing Cross.
After the London reconnaissance they immediately contacted Asha, a pattern which the prosecution allege revealed his central role in the conspiracy.
Mr Laidlaw said Asha was not involved in the purchase of the car bombs or the construction of any explosive devices and remained far away from both London and Glasgow at the time of the attacks.
However, he added that Asha provided money to buy the car bombs and components and also supplied Abdulla with “guidance and support”.
The court heard how Asha gave Abdulla £1,300 even though his General Medical Council registration had lapsed and he was only paid a fraction of his normal £2,400 monthly salary.
Mr Laidlaw said the West End bombs were to be the first in a series of similar attacks and, as well as the two Mercedes and Jeep, the men had bought another Mercedes and a BMW.
But, when the bombs failed and facing imminent discovery by the police and the security services, the terrorists switched tactics to a suicide attack.
After fleeing central London, Abdulla and Ahmed spent the night in a hotel in Forest Gate before travelling to Glasgow. The next day, the two men attempted a suicide attack on the international terminal at Glasgow Airport.
Mr Laidlaw described how the Jeep was driven at the terminal doors in an attempt to explode the vehicle in the departure hall packed with passengers checking in. The case continues.
The two accused and the student who died of burns
Bilal Abdulla
THE 29-year-old Iraqi was described as a "central figure" in the terrorist cell.
Born in Britain Abdulla was moved back to Iraq when he was five and educated there. He graduated in medicine from the University of Baghdad and returned here in 2004 to study at Cambridge.
He moved to Glasgow in 2006 to become a junior house doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. On his application form gave Asha's name as the friend to be contacted in an emergency.
Mohammed Asha
CONSIDERED "extremely talented" with tremendous potential by his lecturers, Asha was born in Saudi Arabia and won a medical scholarship to the University of Amman in Jordan which he graduated from in 2004.
The 27-year-old, who is married with a young child, first came to Britain in 2003 where he trained at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. He joined the neurology department at the North Staffordshire Hospital near Stoke in 2006 as a senior house officer.
Kafeel Ahmed
THE 28-year-old who joined Abdulla in the attack on Glasgow airport and died a month later from burns, was studying medical engineering in the UK.
He began his studies at Queens College, Belfast before moving to the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge to take a Phd. He left Britain in 2005 to return to India because of a family illness but returned to the UK in May 2007.
