TIMES ONLINE: The most unlikely defendant in the crowded dock at Woolwich Crown Court was Donald Douglas Stewart-Whyte, son of a former Conservative Party election agent, half-brother of a fashion model and a Muslim for less than five months before his arrest.
Mr Stewart-Whyte, 23, an art student, admitted in the witness box to dealing cannabis and having possession of a Baikal 9mm handgun with ammunition but denied that he was part of any terrorist mass murder plot.
The prosecution alleged that he was a “footsoldier” who had signalled his willingness to take part in a mid-air suicide mission, but he claimed that he knew nothing of the airline plot and had turned to Islam as a route away from anxiety attacks, mental health problems and drug use. Soon after his conversion in March 2006, he wrote and published a leaflet entitled Look at Islam, Not Muslims, in which he argued that Islam and terrorism were not synonymous.
Mr Stewart-Whyte, who lived with his mother, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, was suffering from panic attacks that kept him away from Amersham and Wycombe College, where he was studying fine art before his arrest. The Crown alleged that his religious mentor was another of the defendants, Umar Islam, also a convert to the Muslim faith. >>> Sean O’Neill | Tuesday, September 08, 2009
