Glasgow bomb terror trial

TWO NHS doctors plotted “indiscriminate and wholesale” murder in a series of car bombings across Britain, a court was told today.

Bilal Abdulla, 28, and Mohammed Asha, 29, were members of an Islamic terrorist cell, Woolwich Crown Court in London heard.
Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw QC said they wanted to kill innocent people and gain worldwide attention.

Mr Laidlaw said: “Their plan was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles.
“No warnings were to be given and the cars were to be positioned in busy urban areas.
“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 hoped to leave the public “gripped by fear” by carrying out these attacks with no warning about where the next would occur, the court heard.
The plotters knew public anxiety would be heightened as it was in the summer of 2005 after the July 7 attacks on London and the failed bombings a fortnight later, the jury was told.
Mr Laidlaw said: “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.”
Spectacular

Mr Laidlaw was opening the prosecution case against the two men accused of plotting car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
The jury was told the two men spent at least six months preparing what terrorists would call the “spectacular” attacks.
The prosecutor said a house with a garage in a quiet residential area near Paisley, on the outskirts of Glasgow, was used as a bomb factory.

Mr Laidlaw said a reconnaissance trip was also made in May last year when members of the terrorist cell visited central London, including the West End and the area around the Old Bailey.
He said the men also purchased a large number of gas canisters, nails to be used as shrapnel, and fuel and oil to add to the car bombs.
Iraqi-born Abdulla was arrested after a burning Jeep was driven into the main terminal building at Glasgow Airport on June 30 last year.

Jordanian Asha, a neurologist, was arrested on the M6 motorway in Cheshire later that day.
In the early hours of June 29, two Mercedes cars containing petrol, gas cylinders and nails were driven into London’s West End.
One was discovered outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, causing hundreds of revellers to be evacuated.

The second car, parked in adjoining Cockspur Street, was towed to a nearby car pound. It was made safe later that day.
Abdulla, of Houston, Glasgow, and Asha, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, deny the offences.

The case is expected to run for eight to 10 weeks.

So far, only one person — Ahmed's younger brother Sabeel, also a doctor practicing in Britain — has been convicted in relation to the June 2007 threats. He served half of an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty to concealing information about the attacks and was deported to India in April.

During his trial, Sabeel Ahmed admitted that he received an e-mail from his brother but claimed he did not see it until the day after his brother had suffered horrific burns at the airport terminal.

"This is the project that I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie," Kafeel Ahmed's e-mail read. "It's about time that we give up our lives and our families for the sake of Islam to please Allah."

For a far more extensive representation of muslim violence worldwide go to the Religion of Peace website