'Kafeel Ahmed fled car bomb in cycle rickshaw'

LONDON: Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian-born terrorist who died of burn injuries from a failed suicide attack last year, escaped an earlier scene of planned bombing in a rickshaw, prosecutors say.

Ahmed and Iraqi-born Bilal Abdulla escaped in cycle rickshaws - which are popular with tourists in London's West End district - after leaving two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters, fuel containers and nails outside a club and at a bus stop.

Abdulla is being tried in a south London court along with the Jordanian-born Mohammed Asha for terrorist offences. Both men are doctors.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw said Friday staff at the Tiger Tiger nightclub, which had 556 revellers inside, discovered the bomb when they noticed gas vapour and smelt liquid petroleum gas June 28 night.

The second car was given a parking ticket and towed away to a nearby pound before police discovered that it too was packed with bombs.

Both car bombs, meant to have been set off by mobile phone, failed to detonate.

Apart from the West End attack, Bilal is also accused of having taken part in a failed attempt to bomb Glasgow airport by driving an explosives-laden burning jeep into it.

Both Kafeel, an engineer from Bangalore, and Bilal were in the jeep, prosecutors say. Kafeel later died of burn injuries.

Laidlaw said Abdulla made what appeared to be a will addressed to Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in which he said he wanted revenge for injustices against Muslims by British and American soldiers.

A draft of the will was found on a badly-burned laptop in the remains of a Jeep Cherokee that he and Kafeel drove into the airport's international terminal.