Physician Convicted in Glasgow Bombings

In June of last year, a Jeep with numerous gasoline cans and gas canisters smashed into the terminal at Glasgow International Airport. The car bomb failed to go off, and the two men inside tossed gasoline bombs. Eventually, they were overpowered by the airport police and baggage handler John Smeaton. One of them died of burns suffered in the attack shortly thereafter. The other, Bilal Abdulla, received a 32-year sentence yesterday at Woolwich Crown Court. Sadder still, the man is a doctor who works in Britain's National Health Service.

Dr. Adbulla's father is an Iraqi who moved to Britain many years ago, and the convicted terrorist was born there. The family returned to Baghdad when Bilal Abdulla was five. He returned to England to become a doctor like his father, but couldn't afford the fees and graduated from the University of Baghdad medical school in 2004. He opted to continue his education at Cambridge in 2004, and he made a reputation as an Islamic fundamentalist. He referred to Shi'ites as “cancerous” and threatened to kill a roommate for playing a guitar and not praying enough.

He maintained through out his trial that he was a “healer not a killer” and that the whole bombing thing, including an attempted attack on a London nightclub the previous day, was just a stunt. Mr. Justice Mackay, who presided at the trial, was having none of it. He pointed out that Dr. Abdulla had been given a great many opportunities in life and had thrown them away. Bombing Britain because of the war in Iraq was not an acceptable expression of opposition to the war. His Lordship said:

Many people felt and still feel strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq. You do, you are sincere in that, and you have strong reasons for holding that view. But you were born with intelligence and you were born into a privileged and well-to-do position in Iraq and you are a trained doctor . . . . All of the evidence makes you a very dangerous man, you pose a high risk of serious harm to the British public in your present state of mind. That fact plus the circumstances of the offences themselves means that the only possible sentence on each of these two counts is a life sentence.

If you had succeeded between you in driving this vehicle inside the terminal and causing one of the gas cylinders to explode the casualty level would have been very high. There were hundreds of people there, men, women, young children, people in wheelchairs, a clutter of luggage. It does not bear thinking about. I am satisfied you both intended to die in the process and Kafeel [the man who died of his burns] duly did so. But I suspect your own courage deserted you at the last minute.