Accused doctor 'very worried' after seeing airport bombing on TV news

A DOCTOR accused of plotting a string of terrorist attacks "looked very worried" and went quiet after watching news reports of a car bomb attack on Glasgow airport, a court heard yesterday.

Mohammed Asha, 28, then appeared distant and "absent" from conversation, before disappearing to be alone.

He and his wife and child spent the day of 30 June last year, the date of the attack, with Dr Mohammed Nizam and his wife.

Asha's friend, Dr Bilal Abdulla, 29, and Kafeel Ahmed, 28, drove a Jeep Cherokee packed with petrol, gas and nails in to the terminal doors of Glasgow airport in a failed suicide bomb attack, it is claimed.

Asha is alleged to have helped plan the Glasgow bombing after Abdulla and Ahmed failed to detonate two car bombs in London's West End in the early hours of the previous day.

He met them at Stoke's Royal Infirmary, where he worked as a senior house officer in the neurology department, as they travelled back north and even ignored a "bleep" from nurses on a renal ward despite being on call that day, it is claimed.

His friend Dr Nizam, who had first met Asha during a posting in Shrewsbury, said the pair had gone to the Potteries shopping centre in Stoke with their wives on the morning of 30 June.

They then picked up some takeaway food and headed back to the Nizams' home in the city, where they switched on the television.

"It was breaking news of the Glasgow attacks," Dr Nizam, who was born in Sri Lanka, told the court yesterday.

"We were just changing the channels and seeing what was happening."

Jurors also heard Dr Nizam later told police that "Mohammad went very quiet and wanted to go home".

Surveillance officers watched as Dr Nizam drove everyone in his red Mondeo to Asha's home in Newcastle-under-Lyme, at around 5:30pm, where the Nizams were invited in for a cup of tea.

"In retrospect he looked very worried about something," Dr Nizam told the court.

"While we were there he didn't say much and he looked very tired, so I thought it must have been a long day, so after we had our cup of tea we took our leave."

The court heard that Asha left his guests in the living room while he went upstairs alone for up to ten minutes.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw QC asked Dr Nizam: "Did he give you an explanation?"

Dr Nizam replied: "I don't recall him saying why.

"At this point he was hardly talking. I felt a bit like we had overstayed our welcome."

Asha was arrested later that night on the M6 with his wife and child, the court has heard.

Dr Nizam met Asha in 2005 while both were living in doctors' quarters at the Shrewsbury hospital where both had been posted as part of their training.

They remained friends and eventually moved to Stoke in late 2005 and early 2006, although the two worked at different hospitals in the city.

Dr Nizam said both men were Muslims, who would use the same hospital mosque, and he viewed Asha as "quite devout".

Under questioning, he agreed Asha was a "kind man" and said he had been left "absolutely shocked" when his friend was charged in connection with terrorism offences.

The trial continues.

Nails, gas canisters and fuel …that would not ignite

THE trial at Woolwich Crown Court has heard Bilal Abdulla allegedly parked a green Mercedes outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, London, in the early hours of 29 June last year.

It was packed with 900 nails, two full 13kg patio gas canisters and more than 100 litres of fuel, the prosecution said. Kafeel Ahmed left a blue Mercedes in nearby Cockspur Street with the same mix of fuel and more than 1,000 nails inside, it is claimed. However, neither device activated despite numerous attempts to detonate them remotely using a mobile phone.

Ahmed died after receiving severe burns during the failed suicide attack at Glasgow Airport the following day.

Mohammad Asha, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and Bilal Abdulla, of Paisley, deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life between 1 January, 2006 and 1 July, 2007.

At the time of the incident Asha was working at the University Hospital of north Staffordshire, in the neurology department.

Abdulla worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, as a junior house doctor.

Ahmed was not a doctor, but lived in Cambridge and was a student at the University of East Anglia.