Airport 'bomb' jury sees film of panicking passengers

CCTV footage recorded during an alleged terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport showed dozens of passengers running in terror as a Jeep crashed into a doorway of the main terminal building, a court heard yesterday.

Some travellers were pushed over and injured as people tried to escape in panic, the jury at Woolwich Crown Court, London, was told as the footage was played for the first time.

Many travellers abandoned their luggage, but in the mayhem others caused trolley pile-ups at doorways.

The court heard how long queues of passengers had been waiting to travel on 30 June last year, the airport's busiest day of the year. Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, prosecuting, said Kafeel Ahmed, 28, an Islamic extremist, had been at the wheel of the improvised car bomb, with Bilal Abdulla in the passenger seat.

He said the vehicle was prepared with gas cylinders and petrol, in the same way as two Mercedes cars left in London's West End the previous day.

Mr Laidlaw said the vehicle became stuck, despite Ahmed's attempts to ram his way inside.

He told the court that Ahmed, an engineering student, threw petrol bombs out of the window, before dousing himself in fuel and catching fire. He died four weeks later from his injuries.

One camera showed the vehicle being engulfed in flames, which quickly spread to the building in the minutes before firefighters arrived.

Abdulla, who worked as an NHS doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, jumped out of the Jeep and attempted to fight off police and bystanders, the jury was told.

He was arrested at the scene, but only after one man had lost a tooth and suffered a broken leg as he tried to help police.

The court also heard how Ahmed, 28, had used an internet message service to hold conversations with Abdulla in the run-up to the alleged attack. In one conversation, recovered from a laptop by police, he told Abdulla: "Bro, inshallah (God willing], I think we are gonna start experiments sometime soon."

Mr Laidlaw showed the jury a transcript that revealed Abdulla replied, "Oh cool", before adding a smiley face symbol.

During the conversation in February 2007, Ahmed allegedly went on: "Lol (laugh out loud]. Probably in a week or so we will have a meeting."

The prosecution also claims that Abdulla and Ahmed drove two similar car bombs from Scotland to London's West End, but that mobile-phone detonators failed to work in the early hours of 29 June.

Abdulla, 29, and Mohammed Asha, 28, a surgeon at a North Staffordshire hospital, are accused of conspiracy to murder and to cause explosions. Asha is accused of working behind the scenes to support the terrorist conspiracy, providing advice and cash to pay for some of the equipment.

Mr Laidlaw yesterday began to outline evidence of telephone conversations and meetings between Abdulla and Asha in the months before the attacks.

He said Asha gave a new Nokia phone to Abdulla during a meeting in Preston on 26 February, 2007, hours after the internet conversation took place.

Abdulla spent that night at Asha's home in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and the two men met again several days later in Manchester, the court heard.

The trial of the two men, who deny the offences, continues.