Saajid Badat
| Saajid Badat | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
28 March 1979 Gloucester, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | shoe bomb |
Saajid Muhammad Badat (born 28 March 1979) is a British Islamist terrorist who was sentenced to a 13-year prison term for planning to blow up an aircraft with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
Badat did not go through with the plot. His co-conspirator Richard Reid did attempt to set off his bomb and is now serving a life sentence without parole in the United States.
Badat's studies began at an Islamic college in Lancashire; from 1999 he attended a madrassa in Pakistan. Investigators believe he became radicalised there under the influence of Al-Qaeda sympathisers. It is believed he trained in Pakistan and possibly in neighbouring Afghanistan. There he reportedly met Richard Reid, another British citizen, and the Al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef. Badat returned to the UK in early 2001, but remained in email contact via "Bobu", his handler (alleged to be Tunisian footballer Nizar Trabelsi).
After his return, Badat, like Reid, obtained duplicate passports from British consulates (court documents claim Badat was in the British embassy in Brussels doing so on September 12, 2001, having watched the attacks of the previous day on television). Both Reid and Badat returned to Pakistan in November 2001, and reportedly travelled overland to Afghanistan. They both were given "shoe bombs", casual footwear adapted to be covertly smuggled onto aircraft before being used to destroy them. Later forensic analysis of the bombs showed that they both contained the same plastic explosive and that the respective lengths of detonator cord had come from the same batch (the cut mark on Badat's cord matches exactly that on Reid's). The pair returned separately to the UK in early December 2001.
On their return, both maintained contact with their handler(s) in Pakistan, using a system of telephone cards and email accounts. Soon after this, Badat emailed his handler, indicating he was unsure if he would proceed with the scheme. But, he booked a flight from Manchester to Amsterdam, in preparation for taking a US-bound flight from there. Reid did likewise, booking a flight to Paris and thence to Miami. On December 22, 2001 Reid boarded his flight. Badat did not, having emailed his handler, "You will have to tell Van Damme that he could be on his own".
...
Wikipedia