source, Daily Record online.

They Wanted To Kill ..and Nothing Else
Dec 2 2008 By Chris Greenwood

Jury Told Of Airport Plot

THE men accused of the Glasgow airport attack planned murder on a terrible scale, a court heard yesterday.

A jury was told that the two NHS doctors wanted to "kill and nothing else" in revenge for the invasion of Iraq.

Summing up for the prosecution at the end of an eight-week trial, Jonathan Laidlaw QC told Woolwich Crown Court in London the men dreamed of grabbing headlines around the world with al Qaeda-inspired improvised car bombs.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, and Mohammed Asha, 28, are accused of attacks on London's west end and Glasgow airport last summer.

Mr Laidlaw said only "fortune and fate" prevented carnage.

He said: "This was to be murder and nothing else. It was to be murder on a terrible scale for the British public, both in London and Glasgow.

"It was to be punishment more generally for all of us in this country because of events in Iraq.

"It was not, of course, a plan just to commit damage to property, to set cars alight, that is not the preferred by Islamic terrorists and organisations such as al Qaeda.

"These vehicle-born improvised explosive devices were intended to kill and nothing else."

Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor at Paisley's Royal Alexandra Hospital, has claimed he planned a bloodless protest to highlight the suffering in his country.

Asha, a Jordanian neurologist at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, said he knew nothing of his friend's plans.

A third man, Indian PhD student Kafeel Ahmed, died from burns one month after the attack on Glasgow airport after dousing himself in petrol.

Mr Laidlaw said Abdulla's account of the airport attack, in which he expected to be dropped off but ended up throwing petrol bombs, was like "Laurel and Hardy".

He said: "It was a breathtakingly arrogant performance and it was insulting to each of us that had to listen to it.

"The absurd explanation of the events in Glasgow would have been laughable had it not been that he and Kafeel Ahmed were trying to kill passengers in the terminal."

He said Abdulla's defence was "entirely untrue".

Mr Laidlaw accused Abdulla of promoting his dead friend to the head of the conspiracy when he was, in fact, the mastermind and recruited the others.

The pair deny conspiracy to murder and to cause explosions. The case continues.