Mohammed Junaid Babar, the al-Qaida supergrass (informer), gave a wealth of detail about a camp in Pakistan where fertiliser bomb cell members and the 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan had weapons training. Babar has immunity from prosecution in Britain after pleading guilty to terrorism offences in a New York federal court. Two of the charges relate to the fertiliser bomb plot - he confessed to obtaining ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder for use in bomb-making.Babar, whose family moved to the US from Pakistan when he was two, was radicalised after the first Gulf war. He came under the influence of militant preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed in the 1990s.
After September 11, he believed it was his duty to aid the Taliban, even though his mother worked in a bank at the World Trade Centre and narrowly escaped. He was introduced to Waheed Mahmood as a contact who could get fighters into Afghanistan. In 2002, Babar travelled to Britain to raise money for jihad and met fertiliser bomb plotters including Omar Khyam and Anthony Garcia.
Babar told the Old Bailey that in Pakistan in 2003 he met Khyam, Mahmood, Garcia and Salahuddin Amin. They attended a terrorism training camp and made a fertiliser bomb, blasting a U-shaped hole in the ground. Babar claimed he conspired in two attempts to kill President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and would be facing the death penalty if he had not collaborated with the FBI.
Defence barristers claimed he was a double agent. Babar's wife and child are in the US, and will have a new life under assumed identities when he is released.