Liverpool doctor to be deported over terror attacks

Apr 12 2008

LIVERPOOL doctor was yesterday jailed for 18 months for withholding information on an airport suicide attack.

Sabeel Ahmed was sent a chilling email about the terrorist mission two days before his older brother Kafeel rammed a jeep into the air terminal Glasgow.

And the court heard he had agreed to tell police his brother’s cover story that he was away in Iceland working on a global warming project.

Sabeel was living on Ramilies Road, Mossley Hill, when he was arrested near Liverpool's Lime Street station on June 30 last year.

Yesterday, the former doctor at Halton hospital, Runcorn, and Warrington hospital, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to withholding information about terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.

But the tariff was reduced because he did not read the email until the evening after the attack had taken place.

Because he has already served half his sentence on remand and has agreed to leave the country, the 26-year- old was last night being released into the custody of the immigration service to be deported back to India.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said it was clear from the email that his brother expected to die in the attack, and his body would be left unrecognisable.

He told Sabeel: “I accept that so far as you personally were concerned, there is no sign of your being an extremist or party to extremist views.”

However, the judge said, he had agreed to tell police his brother’s cover story that he was away in Iceland.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw said when police searched the doctor’s Liverpool home they discovered a laptop carrying documents written by Kafeel Ahmed.

The court heard Sabeel, originally from Bangalore in India, refused to help police and concealed the information he had.

Mr Laidlaw said the documents would have been of “considerable assistance” to counter-terrorist police.

The email sent by Kafeel said: “This is the project that I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie.

“It’s about time that we give up our lives and our families for the sake of Islam to please Allah.”

Mr Laidlaw said Sabeel “did not exercise his right to silence” but instead tried to mislead investigators.

The Old Bailey heard how his brother, Kafeel, drove a flaming Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport’s main terminal building on June 30.

The car was laden with petrol and gas canisters but the improvised bomb failed to ignite.

Kafeel Ahmed suffered 90% burns and died of his injuries several weeks later.

The attack came 24 hours after two Mercedes cars, also carrying petrol and gas canisters, were found in central London.

More than 500 people were evacuated from Tiger, Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket after one vehicle was found outside.

But the court heard a mobile phone detonator failed possibly because dense fuel vapours smothered it.

A second Mercedes, parked nearby in Mayfair, was towed to a Park Lane pound where it was defused later.

Bilal Abdullah, 28, and Mohammed Asha, 27, face trial later this year accused of conspiracy to cause explosions.