AN ENDURING THREAT: EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS THEN AND NOW SAAJID BADAT Role: Admitted conspiring to blow up a transatlantic aircraft en route to the US from Europe using 1105 explosives hidden in his shoes. Bio: Born in 1979 in Gloucester, Badat’s parents had immigrated to the UK from Malawi in the 1970s. 1106 He grew up in Gloucester and attended a Church of England primary school and grammar school. 1107 Badat left school with 10 GCSEs and four A Levels and claims he resisted his father’s wishes he train 1108 as an imam, running away to London in 1997 aged 17, where he worked as a kitchen porter and as a 1109 security officer. Before leaving home, he become familiar with the recordings of Azzam publications 1110 which eulogised the ‘martyrs’ of the Bosnian wars. Badat claims meeting the south-London-based British Muslims known as the ‘Tooting Circle’, which included the owner of Azzam Publications, Babar 1111 Ahmed, was central to his radicalisation. According to Badat, Ahmed became his mentor and 1112 introduced him to the idea of “taking up arms in the name of Islam”. He also came under the influence 1113 of Abu Hamza-al Masri at Finsbury Park Mosque. In 1998, Badat went to Sarajevo, Bosnia, to offer 1114 assistance in relief operations, and then travelled to Afghanistan in 1999, where he visited multiple training camps and met with senior al-Qaeda members including Osama bin Laden, Abu Hafs al-Masri, 1115 1116 and Saif al-Adel. He worked for a Taliban magazine in the summer and autumn of 2000, and gathered online intelligence on potential Jewish targets in South Africa after a request from Abu Hafs and Saif al- 1117 Adel. In September 2001, Badat was dispatched to Belgium by Abu Hafs and Saif al-Adel to meet a man he 1118 identified as Nizar Trabelsi and to obtain a replacement passport. He then returned to Afghanistan to collect bombs hidden in shoes, and to meet with bin Laden and Khalid Sheikhs Mohammed, before 1119 Mohammed dispatched him to Karachi to meet his nephew, Ammar Al-Baluchi. After returning to the UK, Badat pulled out of the shoe-bomber plot by emailing his handler in Pakistan telling him that he would not go ahead with the suicide attack and hid the evidence, a detonator, beneath his bed in his parents’ house, though he had already purchased his plane ticket to Amsterdam. He enrolled at an Islamic 1120 1121 college, but was later arrested in November 2003. Badat plead guilty and cooperated with British 1122 authorities, resulting in his sentence being reduced from 13 to 11 years. He was released from prison 1123 in March 2010. ! ! 1105 ‘Shoe bomb plotter given 13 years’, BBC News, 22 April 2005; ‘Saajid Badat: “walking angel” who became a terrorist’, Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2012. 1106 O’Neill, S. and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque (London: Harper Collins, 2006) p. 229. 1107 ‘Deposition in U.S. v. Adis Medunjanin’, p. 49; ‘Shock as “walking angel” arrested’, BBC News, 28 November 2003; ‘British would-be shoe bomber admits plot to blow up plane’, Guardian, 1 March 2005. 1108 ‘Deposition in U.S. v. Adis Medunjanin’, p. 51. 1109 R v Saajid Badat, Prosecution Opening of Facts, p. 2. 1110 ‘Deposition in U.S. v. Adis Medunjanin’, 29 March 2012, pp. 27, 53. 1111 ibid, p. 51. 1112 ibid, pp. 52-3. 1113 O’Neill, S. and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque (London: Harper Collins, 2006) p. 225. 1114 ibid, p. 230. 1115 ‘Deposition in U.S. v. Adis Medunjanin’, pp. 8-11. 1116 ibid, p.9. 1117 ibid, p. 18. 1118 ibid, pp. 30, 68. 1119 ibid, pp. 35-8. 1120 O’Neill, S. and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque (London: Harper Collins, 2006) pp. 231-2. 1121 Johnson, W., ‘Shoe bomber Saajid Badat has jail sentence cut’, Independent, 16 April 2012, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/shoe- bomber-saajid-badat-has-jail-sentence-cut-7647927.html, last visited: 9 August 2016. 1122 ‘Application under section 75 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act’, Crown Prosecution Service, 13 November 2009, available at: www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/badat_transcript_of_s74_socpa_hearing.pdf, last visited: 9 August 2016. 1123 ‘Gloucester bomb plotter Saajid Badat spotted in city’, Gloucester Citizen, 17 April 2012, available at: www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Gloucester-bomb-plotter- Saajid-Badat-spotted-city/story-15837995-detail/story.html, last visited: 9 August 2016; ‘Deposition in U.S. v. Adis Medunjanin’, p. 46. ! ! 87 !