A Muslim who became radicalized by the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia, and then planned to explode a shoe bomb aboard a passenger plane, was on Friday sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment.
Saajid Badat was told he would have faced a 50-year sentence, but Justice Fulford gave him credit for pulling out of the plot, renouncing terrorism and pleading guilty.
Badat, 25, admitted to conspiring to explode the shoe bomb in mid-air aboard a plane bound for the US.
At his sentencing at the Old Bailey central criminal court in London Friday, new details emerged of the plot in which Badat and the failed shoe bomber Richard Reid were to have exploded their devices on planes simultaneously in December 2001, three months after the al-Qaeda attacks on the US.
Reid was overpowered on Dec. 22 2001 as he was spotted trying to light a cord coming from his shoe on a plane bound for Miami.
Badat is the first Briton convicted in this country of plotting mass murder since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
He spent two years in camps in Afghanistan, and after leaving to travel around Europe, he returned to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and was recruited for the plot by Abu Hafs.
Justice Fulford said Badat had conspired to kill hundreds of people in a plot that would also have "shattered" the lives of thousands of their friends and loved ones, and caused huge economic damage and "widespread fear and panic."
Balanced against this was Badat's decision to drop out of the plot and his subsequent cooperation with the police. The judge said it was in the public interest that "if a would-be terrorist turns away from death and destruction before any lives are put at risk," the courts would pass a lower sentence.
Sentencing rules mean that Badat will receive a reduction of one-third on the term imposed on him for pleading guilty at the first reasonable opportunity. He could be considered for parole in just over five years' time.
But he has been indicted on seven counts of terrorism in the US for the same plot, though the Americans have yet to formally request his extradition.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS