Brit bomber from Iraq terror cell

Times:

The NHS doctor who tried to murder thousands of people in the London and Glasgow car bombings had been part of a terrorist cell in Iraq, counter-terrorism sources have told The Times.

Bilal Abdulla came to Britain to open a “new front” in the Islamist jihad after he had been refused permission to carry out a suicide attack in Baghdad.

The car bombs he tried to detonate outside the Tiger, Tiger nightclub and at Glasgow airport were the first terrorist attacks in Britain to have been inspired – but not directed — by al-Qaeda in Iraq. Previous Islamist plots have had connections to al-Qaeda and Kashmiri extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Abdulla, a 29-year-old Iraqi born in Aylesbury, showed no emotion as he was convicted yesterday at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions. He faces life imprisonment and will be sentenced today.

Mohammed Asha, an NHS neurologist based in Staffordshire, smiled and closed his eyes as he was acquitted of both charges. The men, close friends after meeting when they worked as junior doctors in Cambridge, shook hands and embraced before Abdulla was led to the cells.

Dr Asha will be transferred to an immigration detention centre pending an attempt to deport him to his native Jordan. His solicitor said that the doctor wanted to continue his career and would fight the deportation.

The only victim of the two failed attacks was Kafeel Ahmed, Abdulla’s accomplice, a PhD student from India. He died from the severe burns that he suffered after driving the car bomb into the airport terminal.

...

There is more.

The Guardian reports that MI5 had been tracking the terrorist.

An NHS doctor who was convicted yesterday of plotting massive car-bomb attacks in London and Glasgow had been on an MI5 watchlist before he launched the campaign, the Guardian has learned.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, who is due to be sentenced today for a series of plots including a failed attack on Glasgow airport last June, may have been on the list for 13 months.

Last night, Whitehall officials said MI5 held "tracers" on Abdulla that included information which proved helpful to the police once he was identified as one of the bombers. However, the officials insisted there was no evidence available to them at the time which showed he was plotting a terrorist attack.

In security and intelligence services language, tracers are fragments of information which may include details of potentially suspicious travel patterns. They do not by themselves indicate evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the people concerned.

...

MI5 is British homeland intelligence agency as opposed to MI6 which does external intelligence. The BBC has a pretty good series on MI5 for the most part, although it does dip into the gooofy political correctness that some liberal writers impose on an otherwise good show.

The thing to take away from this "doctors plot" is that despite their academic achievements, as terrorist they were pretty inept. It suggest that the enemy bench is getting rather weak.

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