Trial of 2 docs begins in UK

BY OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

LONDON

Oct. 9: Trial of two NHS doctors — Iraqi Bilal Abdullah, 28, and 29-year-old Jordanian Mohammed Asha — started in London on Thursday. The two doctors along with Indian engineer have been accused of conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life in London and Glasgow in June last year.

However, both Bilal and Asha have denied the allegations against them.

An Indian engineer, Kafeel Ahmed, crashed a flaming Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas canisters and gasoline into security barriers at Glasgow Airport’s main terminal on June 29, 2007. Bilal was sitting in the vehicle at the time. Kafeel was hospitalised after being injured in the Glasgow attack and died of more than 90 per cent burn injuries in August 2007 at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

On June 28, 2007, two cars containing petrol, gas cylinders and mobile phone detonators were discovered in central London and defused before they could explode. A green Mercedes laden with petrol and gas canisters was found outside Tiger, Tiger nightclub in Haymarket and a blue Mercedes with similar contents had been parked nearby, but was ticketed and towed to a car pound in Park Lane, Mayfair.

Indian doctor Sabeel Ahmed, who is Kafeel’s younger brother, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in April this year for withholding information about terror attacks from the police. He was deported to India after the sentencing.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the Woolwich Crown Court in London on Thursday that Bilal and Asha were members of an Islamic cell and wanted to kill the innocent and seize public attention around the world. They had plotted "indiscriminate and wholesale" murders in a series of car bombings across Britain, he added.

"Their plan was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles. No warnings were to be given and the cars were to be positioned in busy urban areas. In short, these men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale. In addition to the killing of the innocent, the objective of course was to seize public attention both here in this country and internationally," he said.