Terrorists who plotted to murder thousands in airline liquid bomb attacks bid for jail release
Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Waheed Zaman will face separate parole hearings later this year.
Three men who planned an al Qaeda-inspired plot to detonate liquid bombs on transatlantic flights have launched bids to be freed from jail.
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Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Waheed Zaman will face separate parole hearings later this year.
The planned explosions, which could have exceeded the carnage of the September 11 attacks, led to wide-scale and unpopular restrictions on carrying liquids on planes.
Savant, of Stoke Newington, Khan, of Walthamstow, and Zaman, also of Walthamstow, were sentenced to life in prison and told they would serve minimum terms of 20 years.Zaman will face his Parole Board hearing on September 7, Khan on September 21 and Savant on November 12.
The Parole Board will decide whether the danger they once represented can safely be managed outside prison.
The trio’s 2010 trial at Woolwich Crown Court heard they wanted to kill “an uncertain but potentially large number of innocent men, women and children”.
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Mastermind Abdulla Ahmed Ali had developed a home-made hydrogen peroxide bomb which could be disguised as a soft drink to be carried through security and assembled afterwards.
Ali recruited friends and associates to act as suicide bombers as they recorded martyrdom videos at a flat in Walthamstow, east London, and singled out seven transatlantic flights which departed within two and a half hours of each other as targets.
Trial judge Mr Justice Holroyde said Savant, Khan and Zaman were “foot soldiers” and did not know their intended targets and took no part in its planning or in assembling the explosives.
But he said: “Each of you agreed to join with others in this conspiracy with each of you intending that you would kill members of the general public and yourselves by acting as a suicide bomber.”
He added: “In furtherance of that conspiracy, each of you recorded a suicide video in which you described yourself as being blessed by the opportunity to take part in that mission.”
They were cleared by a jury of their role in targeting aircraft but found guilty at a retrial of plotting mass murder.
The verdicts brought to an end a series of trials following an August 2006 operation to smash the largest terrorist plot ever discovered in Britain.
After the plot was uncovered, restrictions were introduced limiting liquids in hand luggage to containers of no more than 100ml.