MH370 reignites interest in UK terrorist’s claim he gave explosive to M’sian terror cell, which included a PILOT
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Excerpt:
A British man convicted of plotting an Al-Qaeda plane bombing told a New York court yesterday about a separate 2001 plan for a Malaysian pilot to blast his way into a jet’s cockpit.
Saajid Badat, who was sentenced in 2005 to 13 years in jail as a co-conspirator in a notorious December 2001 plot to bomb US airliners, has testified about the Malaysian plan before.
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Badat told US prosecutors at the trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law on Tuesday that he was given two shoe bombs, one which he took to Britain and the other which he gave to a Malaysian cell.
He believed one bomb was enough to bring down a jet, he told the trial by video link from Britain, but the bomb he gave the Malaysian was intended simply to help him breach a cockpit door.
Badat said he travelled from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001 with Reid, some Malaysians and a Mauritanian family.
He described the Malaysians as ‘their own group of four to five individuals including a pilot’.
‘I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit,’ he told the court.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-declared 9/11 plotter now held at Guantanamo Bay, helped concoct the shoe-bomb plot and spoke of having plans for the Malaysians, Badat said.
He said Mohammed kept a list of the world’s tallest buildings and crossed out New York’s Twin Towers after the September 11, 2001 attacks by hijacked airliners as ‘a joke to make us laugh’.
Badat told the court he believed the Malaysians, including the pilot, were ‘ready to perform an act’.
During the meeting, the possibility was raised that the cockpit door might be locked. ‘So I said, “How about I give you one of my bombs to open a cockpit door?”’ Badat told the court.
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I said from day one they’d blame the pilot. At this point, even with a shoe bomb from a passenger, they won’t want to officially admit that would be a possibility because hussein said there’s no more terrorists and cockpit doors are more secure than Ft. Knox (which may or may not have been plundered of all it’s gold). They’ll all play the cya game for the bad guys.