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Excerpt - An FBI video has revealed in chilling detail how a British terrorist planned to blow a passenger jet out of the sky. The footage — obtained by the News of the World from security sources — show the shoe-bomb blast tearing a hole through the metal fuselage as if it were tin foil. It proves that if the attack by Brit Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in 2001 had succeeded, all 197 on board would have died. ~ snip ~ Link to article and video...

A terror suspect arrested last week has been charged with plotting a bomb attack with al Qaeda "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. Sajid Badat, 24, of Gloucester, was also charged with possessing explosives with the intent to endanger life under the Terrorism Act 2000. Badat, who was arrested on Thursday by Gloucest More follows...

At six feet four inches tall, Richard Reid makes a forbidding figure, even from behind the iron grates, steel doors and automated locks that separate him from his prison guards in this place they call Terrorist Central. Richard Reed after his arrest (Richard Reid) Held in darkness and paranoiaHunched on a stool that is moulded to the floor of his broom-cupboard-sized cell, he turns the pages of the newspaper spread out on the concrete desk before him, soaking up stories and pictures from an outside world that he will never see again. "Do you need anything today?" a prison guard...

More than 70 Muslim workers at France's main airport have been stripped of the security clearance for allegedly posing a risk to passengers, officials say.The staff at Charles de Gaulle airport, including baggage handlers, are said to have visited terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One man is thought to have been a friend of Richard Reid, the so-called British shoe bomber. Richard Reid tried to blow up a flight from Paris to the US in 2001. Discrimination lawsuitsEarlier this year officials at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, conducted a security review of staff and questioned dozens...

BRITISH police investigating a terror plot by Islamic saboteurs have found chemical warfare protection suits in a north London mosque. The discovery has shocked detectives, who believe the find confirms supporters of Osama bin Laden were planning a poison attack on civilian targets in Britain. Scotland Yard and MI5 detectives had kept the discovery of the nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) suits secret. They feared disclosing it would spark panic. Government ministers have warned any suggestion that the Finsbury Park mosque had been involved would have worrying racist overtones. Police initially revealed they had seized a cache of weapons, including...

Get out your box of aloe vera-enriched, three-ply Kleenex tissues. The bleeding-heart defense team for convicted al-Qaida terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui wants to tell you a sob story. Like so many apologists for jihad, Moussaoui's lawyers are playing the victim card on behalf of a murder-minded thug who just can't wait to die for Allah. Last April, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder government employees and conspiracy to destroy property. Throughout the sentencing phase of...

Defense lawyers for confessed Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui have asked a judge to subpoena testimony from shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers, trying to spare him from a death sentence, are seeking to show that Moussaoui was lying when he testified he was training to pilot a fifth plane as part of the Sept. 11 operation. They asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to issue the subpoena late Monday. Moussaoui told the jury at his death-penalty trial that Reid, who later was convicted of trying to ignite a shoe bomb aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, was to be part of his...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

'Jihad Johnny' Linked to Flt. 63 Shoe Bomber America's Tailban traitor "Jihad Johnny" Walker and Flight 63 shoe bomber Richard Reid were recruited to do Osama bin Laden's dirty work by the same extremist Muslim group currently operating all over the globe to build an anti-Western army to fight jihad, one Mideast expert contended Friday. "The French newspaper La Provence reported Tuesday that Reid had been an acolyte of Tabligh-i-Jamaat," reports Islamic scholar Steven Schwartz in the New York Post. "U.S. media disclosed last week that Walker had been recruited by a San Francisco cell of the same group." Schwartz ...

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or if you think you are a soldier. You are not----- you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to...

Unrepentant, and convinced that Muslims across the world are the victims of American oppression, the mind of Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber from South London, was shown today in a letter published in a Scottish legal magazine. The letter, written by Reid from his prison cell in America on October 24, 2002, and published by The Firm magazine today, was sent to the magazine's US correspondent instead of an interview. In the letter, Reid, now 31, gave a rambling but cogent reply to a note sent to him by Noel Young, The Firm's journalist, who offered Reid the chance...

The following is a partial transcript of the court hearing in which Richard Reid was sentenced to life in prison for his confessed plan to try and blow up a jetliner with explosives he had hidden in his shoes. The exchange is between Reid and Judge William Young. RICHARD REID: I start by praising Allah because life today is no good. REID: I further admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah. So, for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions. I am at war with your country. JUDGE...

Paris court convicts three aides to shoebomber ReidA top French court jailed three men for terrorist conspiracy on Thursday after finding them guilty of helping "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who narrowly failed to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Atlantic. (snip) Jacqueline Rebeyrotte, presiding judge at the main Paris criminal court, sentenced Ghulam Rama to five years in prison and expulsion from France once his sentence was served. (snip) His co-accused, Frenchmen Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan El Cheguer, both aged 31, were each jailed for four years, one year suspended. The court ordered them released as they have been in preventive...

LONDON (AP) - A British judge Friday imposed a 13-year prison sentence on a man who admitted conspiring with shoe-bomber Richard Reid to blow up a U.S.-bound trans-Atlantic jet in 2001. Prosecutors said they believe British-born Saajid Badat, 25, may have backed out of an alleged plot with Reid, who was subdued by passengers when he attempted to detonate a bomb aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001. ``Turning away from crime in circumstances such as these constitutes a powerful mitigating factor,'' Judge Adrian Fulford said. ``It can take considerable courage to plead guilty...

A KEY al-Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the shoe bomber Richard Reid and one of the September 11 hijackers helped to kidnap five British children from their Norwich home and take them to Libya, a court was told yesterday. Djamel Beghal, 39, is serving ten years in a French prison for plotting a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Paris and was described as so dangerous that even other al-Qaeda members thought him beyond the pale. While he was living in Leicester in the late 1990s Beghal, an Algerian, met Azzedin Journazi, from Libya, at a city mosque and...

LONDON (Reuters) - "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid had planned with an accomplice to bring down more than one aircraft at around the same time, a London court heard Monday. Reid failed in his bid to blow up an American Airlines plane from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001 after passengers and crew overpowered him as he tried to ignite explosives in his shoe. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. court in January 2003. At the Old Bailey Monday, his accomplice Saajid Badat, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiring to use an explosive device identical to that of...

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...

A British-born suicide bomber plotted to bring down a packed passenger aircraft over the Atlanttic at the same time that the shoe bomber Richard Reid targeted an American Airlines flight, the Old Bailey heard today. But Saajid Badat changed his mind and dismantled his own shoe bomb, which was designed to evade airport security. Badat, 25, from Gloucester, admitted conspiring to blow up an aircraft between January 1 1999 and November 28, 2003 in a surprise change of plea today. He had been due to stand trial for the offence. Intelligence services believe Badat had been conspiring with Reid, a...

Algerian radical spills beans on bin Laden "terror network" An Algerian Islamic radical arrested in France has proved a goldmine for investigators probing Osama bin Laden's militant network in Europe in the wake of the September 11 attacks, magistrates told AFP. French investigators now believe that after key testimonies from a handful of well placed members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network the exiled Saudi extremist's secret organisation in Europe is unravelling fast. Since his arrest in Paris last Monday 27-year-old Yacine Aknouche has revealed his links with several al-Qaeda suspects including "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th...

French anti-terror magistrates wrapped up an investigation into four Islamists who may have helped British shoe bomber Richard Reid in France. Le Parisien reports the suspects include the head of a Paris mosque, the leader of a Pakistani community and two other men. Reid spent several days in Paris before boarding a Miami-bound plane in December 2001 with explosives stuffed in his sneakers. Last year, Reid was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. court for trying to blow up the flight. One of the French suspects, Imam Kamel Lakhram, reportedly acknowledged to French authorities Reid had slept at...