Sabeel not an extremist: British court

LONDON: Indian doctor Sabeel Ahmed, the brother of a terrorist who drove a flaming Jeep into Glasgow airport in a failed suicide bombing last year, is not an extremist, says the judge who sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

Bangalore-born Sabeel was sentenced on Friday after he admitted he failed to inform police about an email he received from his brother Kafeel about his mission - although he opened the email only after the June 30 attack.

British authorities said Sabeel will be released from custody and "voluntarily deported" to India almost immediately because of the time he has already served during the trial.

A senior Indian diplomat handling police matters at the Indian high commission said he had not been approached about the deportation.

Sentencing Sabeel, a doctor working for the state health sector in Britain, Justice Calvert-Smith told him: "Just before he (Kafeel) set off on the attack he sent you a text message telling you to access the site to which he had saved his document.

"It is clear that Kafeel Ahmed wrote it in anticipation of his own death in the hope that his body may be unrecognisable and unidentifiable, and asked you to keep up a pretence that he was in Iceland on some secret project connected with his work as a scientist.

"It is clear you did not receive it until afterwards. Having opened the document on the website and realising your brother had been involved in a very serious offence, you kept that to yourself rather than going to the authorities. I accept there is no sign of you being an extremist or party to extremist views."

In his 520-word letter sent two hours before his abortive Glasgow mission, Kafeel said, "I am sorry for putting you in this situation. But it's about time that we give up our lives and families for the sake of Islam to please Allah. And you will inshallah get the reward for this. (If) they can't figure out who it was, then keep me alive for as long as possible.

"This is a project I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie and I hope you can forgive me for being such a good liar. It was necessary."

The message added: "Inshallah by the time you get this message I should have achieved one of the two goals by the will of Allah."

However, both Kafeel's missions failed.

Two car bombs parked in central London and designed to detonate remotely from a mobile phone call failed to explode June 29.  

A day later Kafeel, at the wheels of a flaming Cherokee Jeep, aimed for the entrance doors of Glasgow airport but crashed into the pillars.