| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| Badat convicted |
| 2005-03-01 |
| Terror suspect Saajid Badat has become the first al-Qaeda suspect to be convicted in Britain. Badat had trained as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had conspired with Richard Reid, the British man who became known as the shoe-bomber, to blow up an aircraft. Badat had been preparing to attack he had booked a flight to the United States, via Amsterdam. At the Old Bailey today he admitted that he had conspired to put an explosive device on a plane in the months after September 11 2001. The 25-year-old said he had been given the training and the bomb in Afghanistan. The conviction comes the government tries to get its controversial anti-terrorist laws through parliament without compromise. Badat was arrested at his home in Gloucester in November 2003 - two years after another British man Richard Reid attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight to Miami. Police said that components of shoe bombs were found in Badat's home at the time of his British arrest and that "those components were found to be substantially similar to those in Reid's shoe bombs". In fact the two devices were identical - even the detonating cord on both had been cut from the same roll. But Badat changed his mind and dismantled his own shoe bomb, which was designed to evade airport security, Richard Horwell, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #8 ok..i'm busted, it was me..2b. But nobody asked and I was dying to tell :-) |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-01 6:13:13 PM |
| #7 Thanks for asking. Yes I did. It was New Years Eve, 2001. Jets were flying over the Sears Tower of Chicago, the terror threat was on high, and yet, as the train pulled in at the base of it â we were sitting with a man who claimed to have a bomb in his shoe that another passenger had thrown from the train. This is true. You just canât make this stuff up. This big, kinda fat, goofy guy, who (Iâd later learn) looked just like Pearlman, aggressively batted a magazine out of the hands of the guy sitting next to me. Awhile later, upon picking it up, he realized it had been sliced with some sort of blade that must have been hidden in his hand. So he asked to speak to the conductor and while he did, another passenger came up and noted that this guy had claimed to have a bomb in his shoe. This passenger asked him to see âthe shoe bombâ (they had been sitting together in the bar car much of the trip). When he obliged, the passenger pulled the battery out of it and threw it out of the trainâs window. The conductor was having a hard time believing this, so they called back to the station where he claimed to have thrown from the train and they confirmed that, indeed witnesses had seen something thrown from the train as stated, but what they found was just a water bottleâ¦.or something like that (which doesnât jive with having a battery attached)â¦but I digress. So eventually, we were told they would arrest him. We passed several stops⦠and when we finally pulled into Chicago (BTW, the train stops at the base of the Sears Tower) the cops were waiting, but they let him walk right off the train. A long Keystone Cops episode followed, itâs all too funny â that culminated in the head cop telling me that if I continued to cause trouble they would remove ME from the train. (I was demanding they call the conductor, who had gone home already, and verify that he was supposed to be arrested and not let him back on the train to DC.) Later last year, when I saw the FBI photos of Pearlman, I wrote them another letter (Iâd called them the night of the incident and wrote them a letter of complaint immediately after the incident) but heard nothing, and then after reading another news article adding to my suspicion, I called them. I was asked, âhave you seen him lately?â âNoâ âCall us back if you doâ. I promiseâ¦this story is true. Only in a PC world. |
| Posted by: gosemercondor 2005-03-01 6:11:32 PM |
| #6 Gosh 2b, that's terrible! Did you ever report it to the FBI? |
| Posted by: gosemercondor 2005-03-01 5:05:55 PM |
| #5 just as an interesting side note - even though I suspect that this may have actually been Pearlman (he was unknown at the time) after demanding he not be put back on my train, I got a stern lecture by the Cop in charge about how if I caused any more problems, they would remove me from the train. Mind you, I was being very polite - not rude! |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-01 9:37:58 AM |
| #4 that's a good point. Also because our society allows for success - so the only people signing up for Jihad are our societies greatest losers. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-01 9:32:32 AM |
| #3 just for the record, I said the above comment. I didn't notice the name was changed somehow to Glosing-whatever. |
| Posted by: shellback 2005-03-01 9:31:15 AM |
| #2 I think because most Anglos can see something wrong (or get a funny feeling) about other Anglos. With Arabs, or Arab-looking peoples, it's more difficult because even though you may be slightly suspicious, you don't want to make a fool of yourself harrassing a guy who may not be a terrorist, just because he's an Arab. |
| Posted by: Glosing Flang5795 2005-03-01 9:29:08 AM |
| #1 AQ hasn't had much luck with their Anglo Jihadi's. Richard Reid - failed. Badat - failed. Only hat smug little loser from N.CA managed to kill a CIA agent. In 2001 I was on a train from LA to Chicago with a guy who looked exactly like Adam Pearlman, who claimed to have a shoe-bomb, which another passenger threw out of the train. He was supposed to be arrested - but Amtrack Keystone cops let him back on the train to DC. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-01 7:25:46 AM |