Car bomber left will to bin Laden, court told
Glasgow Airport terror suspect ‘expected to die’
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An Islamic terrorist who launched a suicide car bomb attack on Glasgow Airport left a will addressed to Osama bin Laden, a court heard yesterday.
NHS doctor Bilal Abdulla, 29, wrote that he was planning to kill in revenge for injustices against Moslems by British and US soldiers, Woolwich Crown Court, London, was told. A draft of the will was found on a badly burned laptop computer in the remains of a Jeep Cherokee that ploughed into the airport’s main terminal building.
The computer also contained videos of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, coffins of US soldiers and clips of speeches by al Qaida leader bin Laden.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said Abdulla had written the document because he expected to die in the attack alongside a second man, Kafeel Ahmed, 28.
He said: “This document is addressed to, among others, the leaders of jihad in Iraq, to bin Laden and to the brothers or soldiers of jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine and other areas of the world.
“The terms in which it is written, we submit, expose that the defendant’s position in his trial before you is a lie. The attacks he was planning were intended to kill.
“They were in revenge for the injustices, as the defendant sees them, that the British and American people and their armies visit on the Moslem communities.”
Abdulla, who is on trial with a third man, Mohammed Asha, 28, was arrested at the airport despite attempting to fight off police and members of the public.
His accomplice, Ahmed, who drove the vehicle and helped fill it with gas canisters and petrol, died later in hospital from burns.
Abdulla, from Houston, near Glasgow, and Asha, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, worked as doctors at NHS hospitals in Scotland and Staffordshire. They deny conspiring to murder and cause explosions.
Abdulla and Ahmed launched the suicide attack after attempts to detonate car bombs in London’s west end early the previous day failed, the court was told. Mobile-phone detonators in two Mercedes cars failed to ignite.
Mr Laidlaw said CCTV footage had captured the two men catching rickshaws to escape the scene after parking the vehicles – one outside a nightclub and the other in an adjoining street.
The court heard that the men stayed overnight at a London hotel before travelling to Scotland, after a meeting at the hospital in Stoke where Asha worked.
Mr Laidlaw said they then worked through the night preparing a third vehicle for the Glasgow attack. Ahmed also prepared an online will.
At about 5.30am, Abdulla sent an e-mail to his colleagues in which he pretended to be his sister and said he had been paralysed in a road accident abroad.
Mr Laidlaw said: “Presumably this was written with the expectation he would be killed in the Glasgow Airport attack and it would not be possible to identify his body.
“This was written to buy time before the authorities worked out who they were.”
The court also heard that, after his arrest in Glasgow, Abdulla told a police officer: “Yes, we’re terrorists, but . . .”, trailing off before completing his sentence.
Asha was arrested on the M6 that evening after undercover officers saw him dump Islamic documents, books and CDs at two supermarkets near his home.
The case continues.
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