Saajid Muhammad Badat (born 28 March 1979) is a British born, from Indian Gujarati descent, terrorist who was sentenced to a 13-year prison term for planning to blow up an aircraft with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
Badat did not go through with the plot. His co-conspirator Richard Reid attempted unsuccessfully to set off his bomb and is now serving a life sentence without parole in the United States.
Radicalisation
Badat began his education at The Crypt School in Gloucester. After this, Badat began studying at an Islamic college in Lancashire; from 1999 he attended a madrassa in Pakistan. Investigators believe he became radicalised there under the influence of Al-Qaeda sympathisers. It is believed he trained in Pakistan and possibly in neighbouring Afghanistan. There he reportedly met Richard Reid, another British citizen, and the Al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef. Badat returned to the UK in early 2001, but remained in email contact via "Bobu", his handler (alleged to be Tunisian footballer Nizar Trabelsi).
Aftermath
Following the failure of Reid's mission and his arrest and conviction, Badat remained silent and returned to his Islamic studies in Blackburn. He appears to have cut ties with his handler in Pakistan, but kept the shoe bomb components at his home on St. James Street in Gloucester (the detonator under his bed, the explosive in a hallway cupboard). Acting on secret intelligence, police searched the home in November 2003. They found the concealed bomb parts (they had evacuated more than 100 families from houses in the surrounding area) and arrested Saajid Badat.
Sentencing and imprisonment
On 28 February 2005 at the Old Bailey in London, Badat pleaded guilty to involvement in a conspiracy to destroy a US-bound aircraft. On 22 April Badat was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment. Delivering the sentence the judge, Mr Justice Fulford, said Badat's withdrawal from the plot justified a more lenient sentence, saying, "Turning away from crime in circumstances such as these constitutes a powerful mitigating factor". Had Badat not withdrawn, the judge said, he would have received a life sentence. In 2012 the British government revealed that Badat had been released from prison in March 2010. Theresa May was questioned by Labour MP Keith Vaz about the deal which included the use of taxpayer money to rehouse Badat and provide an office space with phone and internet service.
Shoe bomb testimony
Saajid Badat also gave evidence (via video-link from his secret hiding place in the UK) in March 2014 at the trial in New York of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (Osama bin Laden's son-in-law), during which he testified that instructions were given to him during his time in Afghanistan (2001) to give shoe bombs to a group of four to five Malaysian terrorists, one of them the pilot. Badat gave them one of his own shoe bombs.
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