A court in India has rejected a petition filed by the doctor brother of Glasgow Airport car bomber Kafeel Ahmed to dismiss charges in a terror plot case.
Ex-NHS doctor Sabeel Ahmed was charged with conspiring to kill Hindu leaders and government officials in 2012.
The case, which was registered in the city of Bengaluru, saw 14 other accused persons convicted and subsequently released in 2016 after they pled guilty.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that the accused had procured illegal arms and ammunition for targeted killings of important members of the Hindu community in Bengaluru, Hubballi in Karnataka and Nanded in Maharashtra.
Ahmed was deported from Saudi Arabia in August 2020 in connection with the alleged terror plot.
READ MORE: Doctor jailed for Glasgow Airport terror plot arrested over café bombing
According to reports in India, Ahmed filed a petition with The High Court of Karnataka to dismiss the charges, stating that he had been acquitted by a Delhi court in an identical case, in which he faced allegations of attempting to recruit Indians for Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), a branch of the Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda. However, the High Court concluded that the charges before the Delhi court were not same as those invoked against him in Bengaluru.
The case comes after Ahmed was arrested by anti-terror police in Bengaluru in May in connection with the bombing of a café in the city in March.
At least 10 people were injured in the blast, which was reportedly conducted using an improvised explosive device (IED).
Reports in India say Ahmed was one of five people arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on suspicion of aiding the main suspects in the case.
Ahmed is the younger brother of Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a Jeep laden with petrol and gas canisters into Glasgow Airport in June 2007.
Kafeel Ahmed died after driving a car bomb into Glasgow Airport in June, 2007 (Image: PA)
The doctor, who worked at Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust, was jailed for 18 months in April 2008 at London’s Old Bailey for withholding information about the failed suicide car bomb attack, after pleading guilty to failing to disclose information that could have prevented an act of terrorism.
He was then deported to India after his release.
Ahmed told police that his brother was in Iceland carrying out research on global warming, instead of admitting that he knew of his suicide mission.
He continued to mislead detectives investigating the attack for five days and failed to tell them his brother had texted him shortly before driving into Glasgow Airport, directing him to the “drafts” section of an email account.
When Ahmed logged in an hour after the attack, he found his brother’s suicide note and Islamic will as well as instructions to lie to police about his whereabouts.
Kafeel Ahmed died at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary weeks after the Glasgow Airport attack. He had suffered burns to 90% of his body when he was arrested.
READ MORE: Glasgow Airport suicide bomber's brother acquitted on terror charges
Fellow perpetrator, Iraqi doctor Bilal Talal Samad Abdullah, a passenger in the Jeep, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in December 2009 and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 32 years.
Abdullah worked less than three miles from the Glasgow Airport terminal building at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.
Following Bilal Abdullah’s conviction, Strathclyde Police Assistant Chief Constable Campbell Corrigan said the terrorists had “failed in their attempts to cause mayhem and mass murder at the airport”.
The day before the attack, Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed drove to London from Glasgow in two cars packed with gas canisters, petrol and thousands of nails, before leaving the vehicles outside a nightclub near Piccadilly Circus.
The explosives failed to detonate, and with a police manhunt under way to trace them, the pair then made the decision to launch a suicide attack on Glasgow Airport.
In a “confession” in 2021, Sabeel Ahmed revealed that while he was living and working in England, “he was in constant contact with his elder brother Kafeel Ahmed and during that time Kafeel used to constantly talk to him about Jihad, citing the bad condition of Muslims in the world.”
Hindi News described Ahmed at the time as India’s “richest terrorist” who was “probably the only highly educated terrorist” in the country “whose almost entire family was in the medical profession”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article