London - A doctor from India Friday became the first person
to be sentenced in Britain in connection with the attempted car
bombing of Glasgow airport in Scotland last June.
Sabeel Ahmed, the brother of one of the bombers, was sentenced to
18 months at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London, but walked free
as the time he had already spent in pre-trial detention was taken
into account.
The 26-year-old, who had earlier admitted withholding information
relating to the attack, would be voluntarily repatriated to India,
the court ruled.
His brother Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a blazing jeep at the main
entrance of Glasgow airport on June 30, 2007, died of his severe
injuries five weeks later.
The court heard that Sabeel Ahmed, who is from Bangalore, received
a telephone text message alerting him to an e-mail from his brother
in which a reference was made to the impending attack.
In it, Kafeel Ahmed said: 'This is the project that I was working
on for some time now. Everything else was a lie. I sincerely
apologize and pray that you forgive me for keeping this from you. It
was for your safety and for the sake of the project.'
Furthermore, Kafeel Ahmed asked his brother to protect him by
telling the police that he was working on a global warming project in
Iceland.
'If they can't figure out who it was, then keep me alive as long
as possible,' the e-mail read, according to details released by the
court.
But Sabeel Ahmed, who was working as a doctor in Liverpool at the
time, only opened his e-mail account after the attack, the court
heard. He did not tell the police about the information immediately
after his arrest.
A court commentator said the relative leniency of the sentence,
and Sabeel Ahmed's immediate release Friday to enable him to return
to India, showed that the judges were convinced that the accused did
not know about the terror plan in advance.
'I accept that so far as you personally were concerned there is no
sign of your being an extremist or party to extremist views,' the
presiding judge said.
However, he ruled that Sabeel Ahmed had agreed to tell the police
his brother's cover story.
A day before the Glasgow attack, police in London were able to
prevent the car bombing of a packed nightclub that has been linked by
prosecutors to the attempted airport bombing.
Two of his accomplices, Bilal Abdullah, and Mohammed Asha, also
doctors, face trial later this year.
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