A jury is being told that a patient assisted in dissuading the guy who is suspected of planning a terror attack at a hospital in Leeds. The man is currently on trial.
Prosecutors told the court that when the patient was taking a break outside St. James’s Hospital, he “certainly saved many lives” by talking down the man who was preparing to “kill as many nurses as possible” with a pressure cooker bomb.
In the wee hours of January 20, Mohammed Farooq, 28, was taken into custody outside the Gledhow Wing after someone by the name of Nathan Newby alerted the police.
Farooq, who was a clinical support worker at the hospital, had a viable pressure cooker bomb with him, which he later told police was modelled on one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attacks but intended to be twice as powerful, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
The defendant “had gone to the hospital to commit a terrorist atrocity and seek his own martyrdom – first, by detonating the IED (improvised explosive device) and using bladed weapons to kill as many people as possible,” said Judge Jonathan Sandiford KC, who opened Farooq’s trial on Monday.
According to the prosecutor, Farooq also planned to use a fake gun he was carrying to provoke the responding police officers into shooting him to death.
The defendant had originally intended to send a bomb threat and then attack those who were leaving the hospital during the scheduled evacuation, Mr. Sandiford told the jury.
But, he said, the “first piece of good fortune” was that the text message he sent to an off-duty nurse was not seen for almost an hour and the full-scale evacuation did not happen.
Farooq fled, according to the prosecutor, but soon after, he came back to the hospital with a new plan: he was going to wait for a staff shift change in a Costa coffee shop and then blow up his device to “kill as many of them as possible.”
Mr. Sandiford, however, informed the court that Mr. Newby “noticed the defendant” when he was standing outside the hospital, claiming that “luck intervened again.”
He stated: “Mr. Newby started talking to him instead of leaving when he noticed something didn’t seem right. As the defendant would later tell the police officers who caught him, Mr. Newby was successful in “talking him down,” therefore that small deed spared many lives that night.
According to Mr. Sandiford, the accused informed Mr. Newby of his intention to bring the device inside the hospital and “murder as many nurses as possible.”
He claimed that Farooq gave Mr. Newby his phone so that he could call the police. Farooq is also accused of plotting an attack on RAF Menwith Hill, which is close to Harrogate, according to the prosecutor.
Four jail guards flank Farooq as he sits in the dock, rejects one accusation of plotting terrorist activities. Farooq is wearing a grey T-shirt. The jury has been informed that the accused has previously acknowledged several offenses.
Jurors were informed by Mr. Sandiford that he believed “whether the defendant intended to commit an act or acts of terrorism” would be the central question in this case.
According to him, Farooq built the bomb after reading a post titled “Build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” written by the “AQ chief” and becoming self-radicalized online.
Additionally, the prosecutor informed the jury that the defendant “had been conducting a poison pen campaign against them” because he had a grudge against a number of his former hospital coworkers.
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