Gloucester shoebomb plotter still poses threat - 05-09-2008

GLOUCESTER shoebomb plotter Saajid Badat has failed to convince a judge he poses "no serious threat" to the public.

Former Crypt School pupil Badat was jailed for 13 years in 2005 for conspiring to blow up a passenger plane and will be eligible for parole in 2010.

However, if he remains a high risk "category A" prisoner, there is almost no chance of him being freed.

In a bid to lower his status, he told London's High Court he has had a "wholly genuine change of heart" and with his extremist past behind him, there is no need to keep him in high security conditions at Full Sutton Prison.

His barrister, Pete Weatherby, challenged the Department of Justice's ruling in March this year that he remains highly dangerous and must stay in Category A, where prisoners are subjected to a tight security regime to make escape "impossible".

Mr Weatherby said the judge who sentenced him, Mr Justice Fulford, accepted he had had a "wholly genuine change of heart" in December 2001 when he threw away an explosive pair of shoes and withdrew from the plot to blow up a US-bound flight from Amsterdam.

Although describing the plot to murder hundreds of innocent airline passengers as "wicked and inhuman", the judge said Badat had renounced his extremist views and accepted that he would discourage others from terrorism and posed no continuing grave danger to society.

Mr Weatherby said that, in refusing to downgrade his security status, the Justice Department had taken into account "vague" and "unproven" security reports.

Also wrongly taken into consideration, the barrister argued, were allegations that, whilst in prison, Badat had consorted with other terrorism prisoners and been involved in organising unauthorised group prayer meetings, although there was no evidence they were "subversive".

Badat's behaviour in prison had been exemplary and Mr Weatherby said there could be no rational justification for keeping him in Category A.

However, dismissing his judicial review challenge, Mr Justice Silber, said the Justice Department had to consider the risk he posed in March this year, rather than in 2005, and Mr Justice Fulford's sentencing remarks were only of limited relevance.

He said the Department's Category A Review Panel had been entitled to conclude that there was "no conclusive evidence" that Badat, who took his case to court on legal aid, no longer posed a grave threat to the public.

Badat, was jailed after he admitted conspiring with fellow shoe bomber, Richard Reid, who is now in an American jail.

Although Badat threw away the shoes after buying a ticket to the US at Amerstam, Mr Justice Silber said he kept the explosives and detonation device until his arrest two years' later.

Had he not withdrawn from the plot, and convinced Mr Justice Fulford of his change of heart, the judge said Badat would have faced a sentence of up to 50 years.

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