Pakistan: Gateway to Afghanistan and the terror camps.
From Gloucester to Afghanistan: the making of a shoe bomber
Saajid Badat this week pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up a plane. What drove this quiet football fan to thoughts of terror?
He seemed the model British Muslim citizen - a poster boy for integration whose knowledge of the Qu'ran and achievement at grammar school made Gloucester's close-knit Islamic community proud.When in November 2003 anti-terrorist police turned up at the terraced house in the Barton and Tredworth district of the city that Saajid Badat shared with his parents, Muhammed and Zubeida, his father never suspected a thing.
Seeing officers at the end of his road, he invited them in for tea only to be told it was his house they were raiding, and his son they were after. Even when police found plastic explosive, a specially adapted shoe and a length of detonating cord hidden in a green case under Saajid's bed, his family and neighbours could not believe the charges.
Badat, 25, was a Hafiz - a person who could recite by heart all 30 chapters of Islam's holy book. Now with his guilty plea on Monday he admitted that he had signed up for a plot of mass murder - the most significant terrorist conviction of an al-Qaida inspired conspirator in Britain since the September 11 attacks.
But following Badat's surprise guilty plea at the Old Bailey on charges of terrorist conspiracy, the Muslim community in the cathedral city were having to come to terms with the fact that "Hafiz" Saajid Badat was a master of deception.
Terror camp
Forensic tests found the detonation cord on his device was an exact match for the one carried by Reid - it had simply been cut in two. Intelligence sources believe that, like Reid, Badat had collected the cord and explosive at a terror training camp in Afghanistan and smuggled it into Britain with the intention of blowing up a transatlantic airliner.
It was in London that Badat, who had been a worshipper at the controversial Finsbury Park mosque in north London, may have first come under the sway of fundamentalists.
In 1998, Mr Badat suddenly quit his degree course and began a three-year world tour, visiting India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Intelligence sources believe it was there that he became a fully-fledged terrorist recruit, learning the basics of explosives at a camp in Khalden, run by Osama bin Laden, before graduating to Daruntag camp to prepare for his suicide mission. His co-conspirator Reid was also trained at the camps, and both would be controlled by Nizar Trabelsi, who is now in prison for planning to attack a US base in Belgium.
But Badat did not stick the course. Instead he quit after two years, returning to his family and the Gloucester community. In the weeks and days leading up to his arrest on November 27 2003, Badat lead the traditional Ramadam recitals at the Masjid-E-Noor mosque. Dressed in flowing robes and sporting a long beard, he appeared concerned to set a good example to other young men in the community.
But many did not swallow his attempt to cultivate a pious image, whispering about his time in Pakistan - a well-known gateway to Afghanistan and the terror camps.
But sources in the community say that Badat is not the only intelligent youngster locally who sympathises with the idea of violence.
"There are small pockets of young people in the community who would be pro Saajid ... [thinking] that something needs to be done to correct the injustice, that they should do things to challenge what is going on," said a source.
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