Dhiren Barot
| Dhiren Barot | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1971 (aged 45) Baroda, India |
| Other names | Bilal, Abu Musa al-Hindi, Abu Eissa al-Hindi, and Issa al-Britani |
| Occupation | Terrorist (Kashmir Mujahideen al-Qaeda) |
Dhiren Barot (aliases: Bilal, Abu Musa al-Hindi, Abu Eissa al-Hindi, and Issa al-Britani; born December 1971) is a convicted Indian-born British terrorist.
Barot was born in Baroda, India, into a Hindu family. His parents moved to the UK in 1973 when he was aged one. He attended the Kingsbury High School in north London. He worked from 1991-95 as an airline ticket and reservations agent for Air Malta, in Piccadilly, central London. He converted to Islam at the age of 20 in the UK.
Barot travelled to Pakistan in 1995. He took part in militant campaigns against Indian forces in Kashmir. Using the pseudonym Esa Al Hindi, he wrote a book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir, in 1999, discussing his experiences and describing ways to kill Indian soldiers. The book was commissioned and published by Maktabah al-Ansar bookshop. According to The Times of India, in the late 1990s and early 2000, he served as an agent for al-Qaeda.
Barot is credited with authoring a 39-page memo that advocated the use of simple explosives composed of materials available from local pharmacies and hardware stores. The memo was created for distribution among al-Qaeda operatives and was discovered in 2004 on a laptop in Pakistan. He reportedly learned the tactics from observations at al-Qaeda training camps.
He arrived in the USA in August 2000 on a student visa along with Nadeem Tarmohamed; however, he never attended any college in the USA. Around this time he began to do extensive reconnaissance of American targets for al-Qaeda. In a Pakistan arrest of Al-Qaeda operatives agents found some 51 compact discs, dating from 2001, of reports and targeting research allegedly compiled by Barot. On 8 April 2001, Barot returned to the UK.
Barot was arrested on 3 August 2004. He was charged by the UK authorities with the following offences:
Barot admitted to plotting to bomb the , the International Monetary Fund headquarters, and the World Bank, among other targets. In April 2007 it was revealed that he planned to use limousines packed with explosives and radioactive "dirty" bombs for the attacks.
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