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Abdulla plotted to set off car bombs in busy spots in London and Glasgow |
Times
An NHS doctor who waged a terrorist car-bomb campaign intended to kill and maim hundreds of people in London and Glasgow has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
Abdulla, 29, tried to detonate homemade devices in two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters, petrol and hundreds of nails outside Tiger Tiger, a West End night club in London, on June 29 last year.
When the bombs failed to detonate, he attempted a suicide attack on Glasgow airport the following day. The Iraqi junior doctor rammed a 4x4 Cherokee Jeep packed with fuel canisters into the terminal building as he threw petrol bombs at holidaymakers.
His accomplice, Kafeel Ahmed, a 28-year-old engineer, was severely burned and died in hospital from his injuries.
The planned carnage was only prevented due to the bravery of Britons caught up in the attacks and because the bombs were badly made.
The jury of five men and seven women delivered its verdict at Woolwich Crown Court after an eight-week trial.
Mohammed Asha, a 28-year-old Jordanian neurologist and friend of Abdulla, was cleared of conspiracy to murder.
Abdulla had developed an intense loathing of the West because of the wars in the Middle East waged by the United States and England. He was found in possession of extremist Islamic literature.
Abdulla met Ahmed in Cambridge when they were working or studying there during 2004-05. They came together through the Islamic Academy, a charity in the city that rented rooms to young Muslim professional men.
The plot to carry out the attacks was hatched in February last year. A few months later, Abdulla rented out a property eight miles from his workplace, the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow.
The windows were blacked out in the garage where experiments were carried out on making the bomb.
In May, Abdulla and Ahmed made reconnaissance trips to London. In the first two weeks of June the bombers bought five cars in Scotland and the north of England - three Mercedes, a BMW and a Cherokee Jeep.
Abdulla and Ahmed drove two Mercedes to London, where one was parked in Haymarket, outside Tiger Tiger, in the early hours of June 29.
There were more than 500 people inside the nightclub, and the street was busy with people making their way home after visiting clubs, bars and restaurants. The second car bomb was parked near a bus stop at Cockspur Street, where a large crowd was waiting for night buses.
Abdulla and Ahmed made repeated attempts to set off the bombs by calling mobile phones attached to detonators. The bombs failed to explode and the two men left the scene, spending the night at a hotel before travelling north.
Realising that the security services and police would now be pursuing them, they made their way to Glasgow to launch a suicide attack.
As soon as they reached Paisley they began preparing the Jeep. The vehicle was loaded with gas canisters and containers of fuel and driven at speed into the airport terminal on its busiest day of the year.
But the Jeep became trapped in the terminal doors, and despite the best efforts of the bombers and although there was a fierce fire, it did not explode.