THE TELEGRAPH: A former public schoolboy who converted to Islam has been found guilty of planning a terrorist attack on a shopping centre in Bristol using a homemade suicide vest.
Andrew Ibrahim, 20, who changed his first name to Isa, had adopted the “extremist mindset” of Osama bin Laden after watching extremist preachers and viewing a series of suicide videos on the internet.
The A-level chemistry student and son of a hospital consultant had also taught himself to make HMTD, the same explosive used by the July 7 bombers, over the internet.
He was arrested by armed police as he walked to Bristol city centre on April 17 last year and when police raided his one-bedroom flat in the suburb of Westbury-on-Trym they found a family assortment sized biscuit box containing explosives, a “crude electrical circuit” to set it off and, hanging on the back of his bedroom door, a homemade suicide vest.
Winchester Crown Court heard that between December 2007 and April 2008, Ibrahim had become increasingly radical, growing a beard and wearing Islamic clothing while justifying September 11 and praising the hook-handed preacher Abu Hamza.
”He said he felt the country looked like the inside of a dirty toilet with a minefield outside, as described by Hamza in one of his lectures,” Mark Ellison QC, prosecuting, told the jury. >>> Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent | Friday, July 17, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: Former Public Schoolboy Isa Ibrahim Convicted of Planning 'Carnage'
A former public schoolboy who converted to an extremist strand of Islam and built a viable suicide bomb vest was convicted today of planning “carnage” at a crowded shopping centre.
Andrew Ibrahim, 20, who changed his name to Isa in 2007 after his religious conversion, was arrested after members of the Muslim community in Bristol became concerned about his behaviour and contacted police.
Ibrahim, the son of a hospital consultant, was convicted making an explosive with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the UK in April 2008.
He was also found guilty of a charge of preparing terrorist acts by purchasing material to make an explosive, making that explosive, buying material to detonate the explosive, carrying out “reconnaissance” before the act and “making an improvised suicide vest in which to then detonate an explosive substance”.
Ibrahim was given an indeterminate sentence at Winchester Crown Court and told he should serve a minimum of 10 years.
Flanked by four prison officers, Ibrahim showed no emotion as the jury delivered its majority verdict.
His mother fled the court in tears as the sentence was passed. >>> Sean O’Neill | Friday, July 17, 2009
THE INDEPENDENT: With his dyed red hair, pierced eyebrows and avowed interest in hardcore dance music, Andrew "Andy" Ibrahim was the epitome of the modern teenager. On his MySpace page, he described his interests as singing in a band, "hanging out", watching chat shows and "lots of reality TV".
There was little reason to expect the bright but gawky young man from a well-heeled suburb of Bristol to stand out from his peers. His English mother, a university administrator, and his Egyptian-born father, Nassif, a consultant pathologist, had ensured their son and his elder brother, Peter, spent their childhood in a settled and privileged environment.
When not living in the £800,000 family home in the commuter village of Frenchay, Andrew was sent to a series of private schools including Downside, the select Catholic public school near Bath whose former pupils include Auberon Waugh, Rocco Forte and Barclays Bank chief executive John Varley.
But beneath the veneer of an expensive education and efforts to strike a pose as a follower of popular culture, there was a disturbed and isolated young man whose adolescent search for identity and slow slide into a drug addiction became twisted into alternative persona - that of a would-be suicide bomber intent on mass murder in a crowded shopping centre. >>> By Cahal Milmo | Friday, July 16, 2009
