Three men jailed for their involvement in an al Qaeda-inspired plot to detonate liquid bombs on transatlantic flights have launched bids to be freed from jail. Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Waheed Zaman will face separate parole hearings later this year.
The planned explosions, which could have exceeded the carnage of the September 11 attacks, prompted wide-scale restrictions on carrying liquids on planes, a policy that remains in place at many airports today.
Parole hearings scheduled
Savant, of Stoke Newington, and Khan and Zaman, both of Walthamstow, were sentenced to life in prison in 2013 with minimum terms of 20 years. Zaman's Parole Board hearing is set for September 7, Khan's for September 21 and Savant's for November 12. The board will decide whether the danger they once posed can be safely managed outside prison.
The trio's 2010 trial at Woolwich Crown Court heard they wanted to kill "an uncertain but potentially large number of innocent men, women and children."
Plot details
Mastermind Abdulla Ahmed Ali had developed a home-made hydrogen peroxide bomb disguised as a soft drink, designed to be carried through security and assembled later. Ali recruited friends and associates as suicide bombers. The group recorded martyrdom videos at a flat in Walthamstow and targeted seven transatlantic flights departing within two and a half hours of each other.
Trial judge Mr Justice Holroyde described Savant, Khan and Zaman as "foot soldiers" who did not know the intended targets and took no part in planning or assembling explosives. However, he said each had agreed to join the conspiracy intending to kill members of the public and themselves as suicide bombers, and each recorded a suicide video describing themselves as blessed.
Convictions and aftermath
The three were cleared by a jury of targeting aircraft but found guilty at a retrial of plotting mass murder. The verdicts concluded a series of trials following the August 2006 operation to smash the largest terrorist plot ever discovered in the UK. After the plot was uncovered, restrictions limited liquids in hand luggage to containers of no more than 100ml.
