Wednesday 17 December 2008

Car bomber Bilal Abdulla was known to MI5

Just as it had the 7/7 terrorists under surveillance before they struck, MI5 knew of the Iraqi born doctor behind the terror attacks in London’s West End and Glasgow airport. Prompting one to wonder: did they also knowingly ‘allow’ them to happen?

The 29-year-old, an Iraqi doctor born in Aylesbury, Bucks, plotted to bring murder and mayhem on an "indiscriminate" scale to London's West End and Glasgow airport. He was found guilty yesterday of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

However, it can be disclosed today that the Security Service had earlier identified Abdulla following a surveillance operation based around another group of radicals.

Security sources said they had a name for the future car bomber but he was only on the fringes of a group which never progressed to planning terrorist attacks and was never arrested.

"There was nothing to indicate that he was planning an attack," a source insisted.

Abdulla, who was born in Aylesbury, Bucks, later emerged as the "key person" in formulating the London and Glasgow attacks in June 2007 in revenge for the war in Iraq. He recruited Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian engineering student, while they both studied in Cambridge.

Ahmed, 28, died a month after he drove a burning Jeep into Glasgow airport with Abdulla as his passenger.

Just a day earlier, the men had failed to set off two car bombs parked outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London's West End. In each case, said prosecutors, it was good fortune alone that there had been no catastrophic loss of innocent life.

A third man, neurologist Mohammed Asha, 28, was acquitted yesterday of helping in the attacks.


Read more here: telegraph.co.uk

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