A man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate did so because it was a designated Islamic State target, a court heard.
Mohammad Farooq, 28, is accused of preparing pressure cooker bomb attacks on the US spy and radar base and a Leeds hospital.
In the second week of the trial at Sheffield Crown Court yesterday, the jury heard that Farooq had downloaded material from extremist Jihadi groups and online guides on how to make a bomb.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said Farooq’s “Plan A” was to target Menwith Hill and when that didn’t come off, he turned his attention to “Plan B” – St James’s University Hospital, which he saw as a “softer and less-well-protected target”.
Mr Sandiford added:
“By January 2023, we say that the defendant had become a self-radicalised lone-wolf terrorist who had made preparations to commit a murderous terrorist attack in Yorkshire.”
Analysis of Farooq’s iPhone and his movements in his Seat Ibiza showed he had targeted RAF Menwith Hill after downloading extremist material on TikTok and lectures by a radical Islamist preacher.
He also obtained bomb-making instructions from Inspire, an Al Qaeda magazine which urged followers to carry out lone-wolf terror attacks against The West”, particularly in the US and the UK.
Mr Sandiford told the court:
“The reason (for targeting) RAF Menwith Hill (was because it) had been designated as a target for lone-wolf terrorists by Islamic State because it was believed that the base had had been used to co-ordinate drone strikes against terrorists in Syria and Iraq.”
Using cell-site technology, police discovered Farooq had made at least two visits to the RAF base between January 10 and the day of his arrest on January 20.
Farooq, from Leeds, later admitted he had an explosive device with him when he went to the air base but claimed he had just gone there “for a drive”.
He also obtained “instructions for the preparation and manufacture…of five deadly toxins as nerve agents”, namely Ricin, Sarin, VX, Tabun and Tetrodoxin.
Talked down by patient
Farooq took to the witness stand yesterday.
The court heard that the clinical support worker at St James’s University Hospital wandered into the hospital grounds carrying a homemade bomb, two knives and a 9mm PAK semi-automatic pistol.
Mr Sandiford said Farooq was standing at the entrance to the Gledhow Wing, waiting for the “right time” when that section of the hospital would be “full of nurses”before detonating his pressure-cooker-style bomb in the early hours of January 20.
However, by sheer chance, Nathan Newby, a patient, happened to be having a cigarette outside the main entrance at the time Farooq was allegedly about to execute his deadly plot.
Mr Newby said he was “good at reading body language”and thought “something was amiss” with Farooq.
He said that Farooq, allegedly inspired by Al Qaeda and Islamic State, was “right quiet at first” but then “just came out with it”, telling him he had a bomb and planned to detonate it inside the hospital.
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The quick-thinking patient kept a calm head and persuaded Farooq to walk with him to a bench away from the main hospital buildings. There they sat and chatted amiably until Farooq started “rocking back and forwards” and told him he had a bomb.
Mr Newby managed to calm Farooq, who had placed a bag with the bomb and explosives inside on the ground next to the bench, and “talk him down”.
Farooq handed him his phone and said: “Please dial 999. I’ve changed my mind.”
The “shocked” patient called police at about 4.20am and in a remarkably calm exchange with the call-taker, explained the situation to her, saying he was with a man who “seemed a good lad, a nice guy”, but who was carrying a homemade bomb and “wanted to set it off”.
Mr Newby said he asked Farooq what was inside his coat, whereupon Farooq unzipped his garment and pulled out a pistol. He tried to hand it to the patient who told him to put it on the bench, which he did.
‘Wanted to get back at nurses’
Under cross-examination from Farooq’s barrister Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, Mr Newby said he first approached Farooq because he looked distressed, “like he’d had some really bad news”, and wanted to cheer him up.
Farooq told Mr Newby he was “feeling down” and that he wanted “to get them back”.
It was explained that by “them”, Farooq meant the nurses with whom he worked at the hospital and had a beef.
Farooq told Mr Newby he “felt like they didn’t want him anymore” and that he “felt like he’d lost everything and just wanted to get them back”.
The witness said Farooq was “really relaxed” and it was “just like a normal conversation, like he was buying some trainers”.
Farooq then started “looking down at his bag” and put his hands in his pockets, “looking agitated” and rocking back and forth.
When Mr Newby asked Farooq what was inside his bag, he replied: “There’s a bomb.”
Farooq told him his plan was to “walk through the main doors past the lifts, straight to the canteen (in the Gledhow Wing)” and “wait for all (of) them to come back in” and detonate the bomb.
Mr Newby said he had been speaking to Farooq “for hours” before the alleged terrorist’s arrest.
Mr Sandiford said:
“The defendant was in possession of a viable improvised explosive device assembled from a pressure cooker and containing 9.9 kilos of low explosive.
“He had with him…two knives, black tape and…a firearm. The Crown’s case is that he had gone to that hospital to commit a terrorist attack (and) seek his own martyrdom by detonating the explosive device and using bladed weapons to kill as many people as possible.”
‘Wanted martyrdom’
Farooq, who had downloaded a map or plan of the hospital, had wanted to “induce a response” from police or get them to shoot him “to give him a martyrdom that he believed would bring him the seven blessings of the martyr and direct entry into Jannah, or Paradise”.
He had parked up outside the hospital and sent a bomb threat from the car park “with the intent of causing an evacuation while he was waiting in his car”. Mr Sandiford added:
“He was waiting to detonate the improvised explosive device and then attack any survivors with the bladed weapons.”
By chance, the bomb threat was sent to a nurse at the hospital who was off duty, watching TV at home, and “didn’t see or act upon the message for over an hour”, so a full evacuation never occurred and Farooq drove away.
He returned a short time later with a new plan of attack which was to carry the weapons, including the homemade bomb, into the Costa Coffee cafe inside the hospital, “wait for a change of shift so that it would be full of nurses, then detonate it, killing as many of them as possible”.
The pressure-cooker bomb, similar to the one used in the Boston Marathon terror attack in 2013, was made safe by a military bomb-disposal team as police began to run checks on Farooq’s movements before the alleged planned attack.
Farooq, of Hetton Road, Roundhay, has already admitted possessing an explosive substance, an improvised explosive device and pyrotechnic fuses in suspicious circumstances.
He has also pleaded guilty to possessing a document likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism and carrying an imitation firearm with criminal intent. However, he denies plotting terrorist acts.
The trial continues.
