Badat, 25, agreed to board and destroy an American-bound flight from Europe three months after the September 11 2001 hijackings killed around 3,000 people in New York and Washington. But four days after he was given an explosive device in December 2001, he had a change of heart and backed out of the mission. The court was told he could not face being a "courier of death" and rejected terrorism.Mr Justice Fulford, sentencing Badat at the Old Bailey, said he had to be given credit for not going through with the plot. "It would not be in the public interest to send out a message that if would-be terrorists turn away from death and destruction before any lives are put at risk, the courts will not reflect in a significant and real way any such genuine change of heart in the sentence which is handed down," he said. Badat was sentenced today after pleading guilty at a hearing in February to conspiring to blow up a passenger jet. Earlier today the court heard that Badat thought he would find "paradise" by blowing up a passenger plane. In letters to his parents - found along with a sock containing explosives at his home - Badat said he was disillusioned with Muslim life in the UK. He wrote: "I have a sincere desire to sell my soul to Allah in return for paradise." Richard Horwell, prosecuting, said the discovery of the makings of a shoe-bomb were found in two suitcases at his home in Gloucester after his arrest in November 2003.
There was evidence that Badat had conspired to become a suicide plane bomber simultaneously with fellow British shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Reid was arrested in December 2001 on a plane to Miami as he tried unsuccessfully to blow up a device in his shoe, and later jailed for life in the US. Badat changed his mind but had kept the dismantled device at his home in St James, Gloucester. Mr Horwell said Badat had told police as he was being driven to the police station after his arrest: "I was asked to do a shoe bombing like Richard Reid". He then told the police about a green suitcase in his bedroom which contained a fuse and detonator. In a black suitcase near a water canister he told them they could find a ball of explosives in a sock. He told officers: "I did not know how to dispose of ... An Arab gave me these things in Afghanistan." Mr Horwell said Badat had used three different British passports, all in his name, to travel to a number of countries at the same time as Reid. The court has been told that they both trained in Afghan terror camps.
There was evidence that both men had used the same Belgium phonecard in September 2001 to contact Nizar Trabelsi, a man later jailed for terrorism. At the time, Reid and Badat were in Amsterdam and then flew to Karachi in Pakistan and stayed in different hotels in the same street. Mr Horwell said: "The crown's case is that, following the terrorist training that Reid and Badat had received, the final plans by them must have been made. They left Pakistan within days of each other and would each participate in corresponding and simultaneous attacks on passenger aircraft flights from Europe to the US. The plot was to cause explosions on two passenger aircraft when in flight across the Atlantic. If they had succeeded, the loss of life would have been considerable and the outrage would have been only a few months from the attack on New York." But whereas Reid had boarded a plane from Paris to the US, Badat returned to the UK. He had booked a flight back to Amsterdam for December but had not booked a transatlantic flight.