NHS medics were bent on carnage, QC tells jury
Murder on mass scale ‘plotted by doctors’
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Two foreign doctors plotted indiscriminate and wholesale murder in a wave of car-bomb attacks across the UK, a court heard yesterday.
Iraqi Bilal Abdulla, 28, and Jordanian Mohammed Asha, 29, travelled to the UK to further their careers in medicine at university and NHS hospitals.
But prosecutors said the pair were secretly members of an Islamic terrorist cell who wanted to plunge the nation back into the terror of July 2005.
Woolwich Crown Court, in London, was told the men turned their attention from treating illnesses to planning a series of devastating car bombs in busy urban centres. They used their intelligence and academic knowledge to conceal their tracks as they spent six months buying vehicles, renting a property and preparing bombs, the court heard.
Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, said they had access to extra bomb materials, including mobile phone detonators, and at least two more vehicles for further attacks.
He said only “good fortune” saved hundreds of late-night revellers when two Mercedes cars packed full of fuel, gas canisters and nails were left in London’s west end on June 29 last year.
The cars failed to detonate, leaving Abdulla, and a third conspirator, Kafeel Ahmed, 28, on the run, with the police and security services close behind. The next day the two men drove a 4x4 vehicle, also prepared as an improvised bomb, into the main terminal of Glasgow Airport on its busiest day of the year.
The explosive materials inside the Jeep Cherokee also failed to detonate, leaving Ahmed with fatal burns as police arrested Abdulla.
Mr Laidlaw said: “Their plan was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles.
“In short, these men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale.
“In addition to the killing of the innocent, the objective, of course, was to seize public attention both here in this country and internationally.
“The terrorists knew perfectly well that the public here would be gripped by fear. They would not know when and where the terrorists would strike next.”
Abdulla, a junior house doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, was described as a central player in the terrorist conspiracy.
Prosecutors said he was bent on committing murder as he helped Ahmed buy materials for the improvised bombs from stores including B&Q, Halfords and Tesco.
Mr Laidlaw said Asha, a neurologist at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, was the behind-the-scenes mastermind.
Abdulla contacted him at every key stage of his preparations, by telephone and in personal meetings, and he helped fund the failed bombings, the court heard.
Mr Laidlaw said: “Apart from the shocking nature of the activity that these two defendants were engaged in, the extraordinary thing about this case is that both these defendants are doctors.”
He said the men shared extremist ideologies and were motivated by what they saw as the persecution of Moslems in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan.
Abdulla and Ahmed rented a house with a garage in a residential suburb near Paisley to use as a bomb factory.
They travelled in a hire car to London’s west end and the area around the Old Bailey on a reconnaissance trip in May last year, the jury heard.
On June 29, Abdulla and Ahmed drove the two Mercedes cars, bought privately for £1,600, from Glasgow to London’s west end.
One vehicle was left outside the busy Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus. The second was parked at a nearby bus stop in Cockspur Street and may have been deliberately placed in the path of those evacuated from the first blast, the court heard.
CCTV footage from inside the nightclub shown to the court revealed dozens of customers milling around as the first Mercedes was parked.
But the terrorists’ plans began to unravel when the improvised bombs failed to detonate. Prosecutors said two hand-made mobile phone triggers left in each vehicle did not work, despite repeated attempts.
When a call was received, it was designed to light a bulb surrounded by matches and igniting the air-fuel mixture in the car.
Mr Laidlaw said a number of calls were made but there was not enough oxygen in the cars for the detonators to ignite the vapour.
This unexpected failure led to a dramatic change in tactics as Abdulla and Ahmed travelled to Glasgow and prepared for the airport suicide attack. Mr Laidlaw said: “On this occasion there was no remote detonation device incorporated in the Jeep.
“For the attack in Scotland, the driver and the passenger, by using petrol bombs and by spraying petrol around, were going to try and blow the car up with themselves inside.
“This was, for all intent and purposes, a mobile incendiary bomb with specific explosive content in the form of mobile gas canisters.”
The vehicle was driven at speed by Ahmed at the airport’s main terminal doors but became stuck in the entrance, the court heard.
Despite the men using their petrol bombs and pouring petrol around the Jeep, it did not explode.
Abdulla, of Houston, Glasgow, and Asha, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, deny the offences.
The trial continues.
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