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Badat convicted
Terror suspect Saajid Badat has become the first al-Qaeda suspect to be convicted in Britain. Badat had trained as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had conspired with Richard Reid, the British man who became known as the shoe-bomber, to blow up an aircraft. Badat had been preparing to attack he had booked a flight to the United States, via Amsterdam. At the Old Bailey today he admitted that he had conspired to put an explosive device on a plane in the months after September 11 2001.The 25-year-old said he had been given the training and the bomb in Afghanistan. The conviction comes the government tries to get its controversial anti-terrorist laws through parliament without compromise. Badat was arrested at his home in Gloucester in November 2003 - two years after another British man Richard Reid attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight to Miami. Police said that components of shoe bombs were found in Badat's home at the time of his British arrest and that "those components were found to be substantially similar to those in Reid's shoe bombs". In fact the two devices were identical - even the detonating cord on both had been cut from the same roll. But Badat changed his mind and dismantled his own shoe bomb, which was designed to evade airport security, Richard Horwell, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-03-01 |
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