Leeds hospital bomb plotter guilty of terror charge

A man who plotted to bomb a Leeds hospital and an RAF base has been found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism.

Mohammad Farooq, 28, targeted St James’s Hospital in January 2023 but was stopped by a member of the public.

A trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the clinical support worker had planned to “kill as many nurses as possible” by detonating a pressure cooker bomb.

Jurors unanimously convicted Farooq, of Hetton Road in Leeds. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Farooq was employed at the hospital at the time as a medical assistant.

He was stopped from carrying out the attack by a patient who removed him from the building, persuaded him and called the police.

The court heard how Farooq’s first target was RAF Menwith Hill, a spy base near Harrogate which is operated by US and British personnel.

When he thought that was not possible, jurors were told Farooq moved on to the “softer and less well-protected target” of St James’s Hospital in the early hours of January 20 last year.

Farooq was arrested outside the hospital with a pressure cooker bomb that was designed to be twice as powerful as those used by the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers.

The court was told he immersed himself in an “extremist Islamic ideology” and went to hospital to “seek his own martyrdom” through a “murderous terrorist attack”.

Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said he had a complaint against several of his former colleagues and had run a campaign against them.

Sandiford said Farooq’s plan was to detonate the bomb, then kill as many people as possible with knives before using an imitation firearm to incite police to shoot him.

The prosecutor said “two pieces of luck intervened” to stop the planned attack.

The first was that a bomb threat he texted an off-duty nurse to lure people to the parking lot where he was waiting hadn’t been seen in nearly an hour, so the large-scale evacuation he was hoping for it did not happen.

Sandiford said Farooq left but returned shortly afterwards with a new plan to wait in a hospital cafeteria for staff to change shifts and detonate the device.

But the court heard that “luck intervened again” as a patient, Nathan Newby, was standing outside the hospital having a cigarette and “noticed the defendant”.

He said: “Mr Newby realized something was wrong and started talking to him instead of walking away.

“This simple act of kindness almost certainly saved many lives that night because, as the defendant would later tell the police officers who arrested him, Mr. Newby was able to ‘convict’ him.”

An investigation found he self-radicalised by accessing extremist material online and obtained bomb-making instructions in a magazine published by Al Qaeda to encourage terrorist attacks against the West.

The movements of Farooq’s mobile phone and car showed he had made at least two visits to the Menwith Hill area in the 10 days leading up to his arrest, jurors were told.

Sandiford said the base had been targeted by IS because it was believed to have been used to coordinate drone strikes against terrorists.

Farooq admitted firearms offences, possessing an explosive substance with intent and possessing a document likely to be useful to a person preparing or committing an act of terrorism.

Counter-terrorism police described Farooq as “an extremely dangerous person”.

Det Supt Paul Greenwood, Head of Investigations for the North East Counter-Terrorism Police, said the defendant was “primarily motivated by an ideology inspired by Daesh, but also by his own deep-seated grievances”.

He added: “We are sincerely grateful for the actions of Nathan Newby that morning, whose courage and willingness to calm Farooq prevented him from fully carrying out his plans.

“Had he not intervened, the outcome could have been devastating.”