Doctor withheld information on foiled Glasgow bomb attacks
LONDON (AFP) — A doctor whose brother died after staging a failed suicide car bombing at Glasgow airport pleaded guilty Friday to withholding information from police about that and two other attacks.
Sabeel Ahmed, 26, originally from Bangalore in India, was arrested last June after two cars containing petrol, gas cylinders and detonators were found in London and a burning car was driven into the airport the next day.
His brother Kafeel Ahmed drove the car at Glasgow and later died in hospital after sustaining 90 percent burns.
Sabeel Ahmed, who had been working as a doctor in north-west England, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment at the Central Criminal Court in London. But he will be released from custody and voluntarily deported back to India almost immediately because of time he has already served in prison.
Two other men, Bilal Abdullah and Mohammed Asha, face trial later this year charged with conspiracy to cause explosions.
Alleged details of what happened were outlined in court for the first time by prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw.
In the early hours of June 29, a Mercedes car primed to blow up was found outside Tiger Tiger nightclub just off Leicester Square in central London.
Later that day, another Mercedes was found in the city's upmarket Mayfair district and towed to a nearby car pound before being defused by authorities.
The cars found in London were intended "to maximise the loss of life and maximise the level of fear felt by the general population of this country in the face of the threat from Islamic extremism," Laidlaw said.
Those behind them wanted to coordinate a campaign of "large and spectacular" attacks," he added.
The Glasgow attack came the following day and saw Kafeel Ahmed trying to ram his Jeep sport utility vehicle through the airport's main entrance.
The Jeep got within about seven metres (yards) of passengers queuing in the terminal building before his passenger threw two petrol bombs, while Kafeel Ahmed also appeared to throw a bomb, Laidlaw said.
Prosecutors say that before the Glasgow attack, Kafeel Ahmed sent his brother a text message directing him to an email account containing documents including Kafeel Ahmed's will and instructions on how to frustrate the police.
In a message to his brother, Kafeel Ahmed, who had a doctorate in engineering, told him to tell people that he was in Iceland on a project studying global warming.
But he added: "This is the project that I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie... it's about time that we give up our lives and our families for the sake of Islam to please Allah."
Laidlaw told the court this information would have been "of considerable assistance" to police in their search for the culprits and that Sabeel Ahmed had actively tried to mislead them.
"After the attack in Glasgow, he came into possession of significant information about the attack and those responsible for it," he said.
"Thereafter he failed to make the required -- or any -- disclosure, and he had, as his plea of guilty now demonstrates, no reasonable excuse for that failing."
