LONDON: They were called the “doctors of death,” part of an NHS hospital-based alleged terror plot involving highly educated individuals, which was smashed by British police in June 2007 following a series of failed attacks at Glasgow Airport and two car bombs in central London which failed to detonate.

Yesterday, the alleged ringleader, Mohammed Asha, 27, Jordanian-educated and a feted neurologist, dubbed by the tabloid media as “Doctor Terror”, and one of his alleged co-conspirators, Iraqi-educated Bilal Talal Samad Abdulla, 29, appeared before Woolwich Crown Court in London accused of plotting “indiscriminate and wholesale” murder with car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow Airport.

Justice Colin Mackay, in his opening statement, warned the jury to reach its verdict “based solely on the evidence it hears as it is given in this court, and not based on any prejudices, beliefs or personal opinions.”

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the court that the men were motivated by revenge against the British government for its perceived treatment of Muslims in conflicts around the world, especially through its foreign policy and support for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Their plan,” explained the prosecutor, “was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles. No warnings were to be given and the cars were to be positioned in busy urban areas. These men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale. By carrying out a series of explosions, with no warning as to where the next strike would occur, the terrorists knew the public would be gripped by fear. They would not know where the terrorists would strike next.”

Both men deny plotting a terror campaign. Asha was arrested with his wife Marwa Asha, 27, a laboratory technician, on the M6 motorway in Cheshire in June last year. Six others were also arrested at the time, but Marwa Asha and three others were subsequently released without charge.

According to Scotland Yard, Asha, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, is accused of unlawfully and maliciously conspiring with Bilal Abdulla, Kafeel Ahmed and “others unknown” to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury. In the first attack on June 29, 2007, Scotland Yard officers found two Mercedes saloon cars containing petrol and propane gas cylinders and a cocktail of nails and bolts in the Haymarket outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub and Cockspur Street in central London. Due to faulty connections, the detonators failed to explode. In the second attack the following day, a blazing Jeep Cherokee, similarly packed with gas and petrol cylinders and nails, was driven allegedly by Bilal Abdulla with Kafeel Ahmed into the main terminal building at Glasgow International Airport. The Jeep failed to break through barriers and thus did not enter the actual terminal building where hundreds of passengers were gathered. Kafeel, a 27-year-old from Bangalore in India, died a few days later at Glasgow Royal Infirmary as a result of 90-degree burns he received to his torso. The incidents precipitated a nationwide manhunt for the suspects. This prompted police to talk about a potential Al-Qaeda “sleeper cell” based in the UK’s National Health Service.

Yesterday at the Woolwich Crown Court, the jury heard that Abdulla allegedly built the bombs and attacked the targets with Kafeel Ahmed, while Asha allegedly masterminded the plot behind the scenes, advising and supporting the plot.

The court heard that two remotely controlled car bombs left in central London in the early hours of June 29, 2007 would have killed many young people on a night out.

“The repeated attempts to detonate the vehicles failed but that was not through any lack of effort by the bombers. It was no more than good fortune that nobody died,” said Laidlaw.

The attack on Glasgow Airport the next day, the court heard, was a “dramatic change” in plan because of the unexpected failure of the previous day. “The change in approach was that the next attack was to be a suicide attack. The bombers, even though the attacks was likely to result in their own deaths, were absolutely determined that the next vehicle would explode. There was to be no repeat of the failure of the devices of London,” said the prosecutor.

Asha’s father and brother, in Amman, Jordan, yesterday again rejected police descriptions of him as a Muslim extremist, and insist he was a political and religious moderate hoping to pursue a career in Britain as a neurosurgeon.

Thus far, Kafeel Ahmed’s younger brother Sabeel, also a doctor practicing in the UK, has been convicted in relation to the June 2007 attacks. He served half of an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty to concealing information about the attacks and was deported to India in April this year. During his trial, Sabeel Ahmed admitted that he received an e-mail from his brother but claimed he did not see it until the day after his brother had suffered horrific burns at the airport terminal. The e-mail sent by Kafeel Ahmed stressed: “This is the project that I was working on for some time now. Everything else was a lie, It’s about time that we give up our lives and our families for the sake of Islam to please Allah.”

The trial is expected to run for up to 10 weeks.