[Preachin']

The FBI’s counter-terrorism taskforce questioned the 29-year-old man for three weeks at Newark, New Jersey, in the spring of 2000. There, agents refused to believe his claim that terrorists were planning to fly passenger jets into buildings, even though he passed lie detector tests.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

[kcvl]

He was approached at his local mosque by a recruiter who offered him money in return for carrying out “a job”. He accepted, even when he realised what was involved.

“If your life has no colour and a mullah says you can be a hero by dying, why not?” he said. “I think there are a lot of frustrated Muslim youths in Britain who feel the same way.”

He travelled to Lahore, where he was taught how to carry out a hijacking and familiarised with the inside of a Boeing cockpit. “I knew they wanted me to do some kind of operation in which I would die but my life was such a mess that in my mind I was already dead,” he said.

“At that time if they had told me to strap a bomb to my body and blow myself up I would have done it as easily as taking a glass of water to drink,” he added.

On his return to Britain, he was given a further £5,000 and sent to New York, where he was told he would be met at the airport.

But he had got married and during the flight thoughts of his wife and baby helped to change his mind. He gave his contact the slip and instead of going through with his mission, he took a bus to Atlantic City, where he lost his money in casinos and then gave himself up.