Death on the NHS

Failed bombers planned 'wholesale' murders, court hears


LONDON (AFP) — Two doctors accused of plotting failed car bombings in London and Glasgow wanted to commit "indiscriminate and wholesale" murder, prosecutors alleged Thursday on the first day of a major anti-terror trial.

Bilal Abdulla, 28, and Mohammed Asha, 29, who both worked for Britain's government-run National Health Service, are accused of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions. Both deny the charges.

Iraqi-born Abdulla was arrested after a burning Jeep Cherokee he was in was driven into Glasgow Airport's main terminal building on June 30. Jordanian neurologist Asha was detained hours later on a motorway in northwest England.

The previous day, two Mercedes Benz cars filled with petrol, gas cannisters and nails were discovered in London's West End theatre and nightclub district.

"Their plan was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles," said prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw at Woolwich Crown Court in south London.

"In short, these men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale.

"In addition to the killing of the innocent, the objective of course was to seize public attention both here in this country and internationally," he said.

Laidlaw added: "It was simply good fortune that the bombs did not go off in London. Equally, it was simply luck that protected the people of Scotland."

He also described as "extraordinary" the fact that both Abdulla and Asha were doctors in the state-funded NHS, arguing that "as the evidence demonstrates, in fact they turned their attention away from the treatment of illness to the planning of murder."

The pair were accused of being Islamic extremists who used a house on the outskirts of Glasgow as a bomb factory, and who made a reconnaissance trip to central London a month before the failed attacks.

A third man, 26-year-old Sabeel Ahmed, was found guilty by a British court in April of withholding information from police about the attacks, and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.

He was deported to his home country India in May after being released from custody due to the amount of time he had already served in jail.

Ahmed's brother Kafeel, trained as an aeronautical engineer, was the Jeep Cherokee's driver, but later died in hospital after suffering 90 percent burns.

Laidlaw alleged that in the Glasgow attack Kafeel Ahmed and Abdulla "by using petrol bombs and by spraying petrol around, were going to try and blow the car up with themselves inside."

"This was, for all intent and purposes, a mobile incendiary bomb with specific explosive content in the form of mobile gas canisters."

The only other man charged in connection with the plot -- Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef, who was detained in Australia -- was exonerated by a court of charges that he had abetted a group involved in the failed bombings, after the case against him collapsed for lack of evidence.
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