Fanatics

There is a high security trial currently taking place in Britain in which 5 young Muslim men, all natives of the UK, are appearing in court. Read those words and weep, these are British young men, brought up, educated and nurtured in this country who sought to kill and maim their compatriots and who admit to attempting some of these crimes.

A jury will decide if the five men, along with three others, are guilty of conspiring to murder thousands of people by smuggling homemade liquid bombs onto a series of passenger jets crossing from Britain to America.

Three of the men who were charged with plotting to bomb the transatlantic passenger flights pleaded guilty at the London court on Monday to conspiracy to cause explosions. Amongst these explosions was their plot to explode a “home made bomb” at the Houses of Parliament to protest the UK’s role in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before we proceed to some more detail regarding the accused let’s just examine the statement made in defence.

Are we supposed to excuse bomb making if it is done at home? Is there a bomb making place that lessens the explosions ripping through and tearing up the bodies of the innocent victims? Does it hurt you or me less when the bomb rips open your guts because it was made at home?

Are we supposed to feel any sympathy because one of their targets was the Houses of Parliament? When did it become acceptable in their warped minds to protest using bombs as the tool? When did their defence lawyers so misunderstand and misjudge Britain that they thought we would find such a plot any more acceptable because they were framing it in this context? Perhaps they thought there was no other chance for their clients?

They were Assad Sarwar, 28, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27 and Tanvir Hussain, 27, who all entered guilty pleas at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London. They also pleaded guilty to creating public nuisance by releasing videos threatening suicide bomb attacks in the UK.

Umar Islam, 30, and Ibrahim Savant, 27, two of their co-defendants, also entered guilty pleas to the nuisance charges. These guilty pleas came after the three-month trial was winding to an end just before the prosecution barristers were due to present their closing arguments. This translates into the eight men facing the two revised charges of conspiracy to murder with one specifying that the attacks were to involve detonating “

I’m sorry for being obtuse, stupid even, but when did trying to bomb to death vast numbers of people and then showing a video you have made gloating about this become a “nuisance?” I thought a nuisance was someone allowing their dog to foul the footpath or a stupid politician making profoundly, insanely silly suggestions. Amongst these yesterday was the one apparently emanating from the Home Office itself, calling for, as an additional punishment, that the perpetrators of knife assaults should be taken to hospital to meet their victims. Imagine if you had been knifed and they brought the bastard to meet you? I think it might well cause a relapse or perhaps a revenge attack, it certainly wouldn’t make you feel better. What twit thought this one up? Oh, wait a second it must be the same idiot who thought that calling a plan to bomb and boast about it on video a “nuisance”.

Peter Wright QC, the Prosecutor said the conspirators were fanatics who believed they would achieve immortality through mass murder. “What they intended,” he continued, “was to shock the world, not merely by the nature of the acts but also by the fact that such actions could be committed by apparently ordinary law-abiding citizens.” The prosecution put it succinctly when they said that the accused were in a gang wanting to kill thousands of passengers by detonating liquid bombs in a wave of mid-air explosions

The prosecution allege that the five men planned a series of coordinated suicide attacks on planes bound from London Heathrow for the United States and Canada in 2006.

The authorities claim the suspects planned to concoct a very lethal sports drink with a gel-like substance to create an explosive that could then be triggered with an iPod or cell phone. All of those items could have been carried on board without raising any suspicions. Tests have demonstrated that these ingredients are lethal when correctly mixed.

The videos made by the plotters which have been shown on television clearly show the accused claiming that they were going to commit attacks in the name of their religion in revenge for our British and American troops being in Muslim countries and that this has to stop. Their message is clear and brutal, we, the West, have to be taught a lesson, again and again and again.

A police inquiry into the alleged plot, and tighter restrictions on the items that airline passengers are allowed to carry onto planes, caused widespread disruption to flights to and from Britain.

The court was informed that the plotters were manufacturing bombs at a flat in Walthamstow, North East London, where their “martyrdom” videos featuring six of the gang members were also shot.

Earlier in the trial Ali and Sarwar tried to claim the pathetic excuse that they were simply making a documentary about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, and that the explosives and videos were linked purely to a related publicity stunt gone wrong.

They claimed the explosives were planned for a stunt at the Houses of Parliament, although, Sarwar told the court, other targets including fuel terminals, airports and other refineries were also evaluated.

Hussein told the court that even though he had agreed to feature in a suicide-bomber style video, the idea of a bomb plot for publicity purposes had shocked him.

CNN's international security correspondent, Paula Newton, said the guilty pleas of the accused were purely a formality because the men had already admitted their guilt via their defence. "They will not be walking free from this trial," she said, “the key issue,” she said, was whether the jury found the accused guilty of conspiracy to murder, which the men have denied.

Just for the record the eight men on trial are: Abdulla Ahmed Ali, aka Ahmed Ali Khan, 27, of Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar, 28, of High Wycombe, Tanvir Hussain, 27, of Leyton, east London, Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking, Essex, Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Stoke Newington, north London, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, of Walthamstow, Waheed Zaman, 24, of Walthamstow and Umar Islam, aka Brian Young, 30, of Hackney, east London. Let’s hope that justice is done, seen to be done and accepted by all, which would mean that these bloodthirsty fanatics spend every day until they die in jail.