Glasgow bomber Bilal Abdulla jailed for 32 years
Times Online
December 17, 2008
An NHS doctor who tried to kill and maim thousands of people in terrorist car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow was jailed for 32 years today.
Slumped in the dock, Bilal Abdulla, 29, showed no emotion as he was told that he was a religious extremist and bigot who had a distorted view of Islam.
Sentencing him at Woolwich Crown Court, Mr Justice Mackay said that the junior doctor had squandered his privileged upbringing and career as a doctor to wage a terrorist campaign against the Britain.
Many people felt and still feel strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq, he said.
You do, you are sincere in that, and you have strong reasons for holding that view.
But you were born with intelligence and you were born into a privileged and well-to-do position in Iraq and you are a trained doctor.
Abdulla, an Iraqi national who was born in Britain, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder and cause explosion on Tuesday after an eight-week trial.
The judge said that Abdullas radical religious and political beliefs meant that he continued to be a danger to the British public.
All of the evidence makes you a very dangerous man, you pose a high risk of serious harm to the British public in your present state of mind, the judge said.
That fact plus the circumstances of the offences themselves means that the only possible sentence on each of these two counts is a life sentence.
Abdulla was the leader of a terrorist cell that tried to detonate car bombs in the West End of London and Glasgow in June last year.
The doctor, along with Kafeel Ahmed, drove a car bomb outside the Tiger Tiger night club in the West End of the capital, and parked another at a nearby bus stop.
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