Posted on 02/28/2005 9:33:26 AM PST by velocityguy
LONDON (AFP) - A British Muslim pleaded guilty to conspiring with jailed "shoe bomber" Richard Reid to try and blow up airliners, an admission police hailed as a major breakthrough in anti-terrorism efforts.
Intelligence services believe Saajid Badat, 25, who was arrested in Britain in late 2003, had volunteered to mimic Reid's failed suicide bomb attack by igniting a shoe packed with explosives during a commercial flight.
Fellow Briton Reid, a self-professed follower of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), was jailed for life by a US court in early 2003 for trying to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in 2001 using an explosive device hidden in his shoe.
At the start of his trial at London's Central Criminal Court on Monday morning, Badat reversed an earlier innocent plea and admitted to conspiring between January 1, 1999, and November 28, 2003, to place an explosive device on an aircraft.
The result marks a major breakthrough for British anti-terror police, who have carried out a string of arrests around the country in recent years, but with no previous terror-related convictions.
"Three years of intensive and painstaking international investigation brought us to the point where Saajid Badat had no option but to plead guilty to this horrendous offence," said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police's Anti-Terrorist Branch.
Badat was arrested in November 2003 in a police raid in the town of Gloucester, western England, where he was living.
Officers also searched an Islamic college in Blackburn, northwest England, which the academically strong student had previously attended.
The raids, coupled with a series of other police operations against British Mulisms around the same time, prompted expressions of concern among Islamic groups that security services were being heavy-handed.
However, intelligence services had linked Badat to Reid through Belgian telephone cards found on Reid, which were said to have been used by Badat to contact Reid's terrorist contact, Nizar Trabelsi, now in jail in Belgium.
Reid was overpowered by fellow passengers in December 2001 on an American Airlines flight after they saw him trying to light a fuse attached to his sports shoe.
Authorities said the shoe worn by Reid, who was jailed for 110 years by court in Boston, was packed with enough plastic explosives to blow a hole in the plane.
Badat had received training in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Pakistan, and had later smuggled a specially-made explosive device back into Britain in late 2001, prosecutor Richard Horwell told the court on Monday.
The device was identical to that used by Reid -- a piece of detonating cord from Reid's bomb matched Badat's -- but was never mounted into a shoe or used. It was found at his home in Gloucester.
"It is clear the plan was that Reid and Badat would bring down a passenger aircraft at similar times in late December that year," Horwell said.
Badat booked a flight from Britain to Amsterdam in preparation for an onward flight to the United States, when the bomb would be detonated, but sent an e-mail shortly after his return to Britain "indicating he might withdraw", the prosecutor said.
The Briton "was plainly having second thoughts" and never took the flight to Amsterdam, Horwell said.
A full hearing, at which the prosecution case against Badat will be given properly, is scheduled for March 18.
Grrrr. These shoe bomber jerks have made getting through the airport a real hassle. No penalty too high!
Have any other plane crashes been linked to "shoe bombers"?
I hope the authorities bring out the dreaded "ladies panties" and torture this guy for information.
He scored A's in Bombing 101, Beheading 101, Fascism 101 and Murder 101.
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