Al-Qaida terrorist in Belfast gets six years

AN al-Qaida suspect who downloaded bomb-making instructions to blow up an aircraft was jailed yesterday for six years at Belfast Crown Court.

The Algerian, who was tried as Abbas Boutrab, 27, has used at least seven aliases since his first known arrest in Paris 13 years ago.

But after being found guilty of possessing and collecting information connected with terrorism, Judge Mr Justice Weatherup accused him of a plot with even more chilling consequences than the decades of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland.

Passing sentence he said: “Now we find the terrorism threat is subsiding and a new threat is emerging.

“This new threat has an added horror because the terrorist stands amongst the innocent men, women and children.

“That’s a feature in the material that was recovered here. It provides instructions for improvised explosives with the objective of bringing down an aircraft and the lives of all those on board.”

Detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland crime operations department, the security services, the FBI, gardaí, and police in France and Holland were all involved in the intelligence operation that led to Boutrab’s capture.

He was arrested after an immigration raid on his flat at Whiteabbey on the northern outskirts of Belfast in April 2003.

Police seized 25 computer discs containing instructions that had been downloaded from the internet in the city’s Central Library three months earlier.

The files detailed how to construct a bomb and smuggle it on board a passenger jet, the six-week trial was told.

They also included information on how to make a silencer for an assault rifle using household items.

Boutrab, who still protests his innocence and plans to appeal the conviction, was also found guilty of possessing a stolen Italian passport.

His head shaven and with a black beard, he refused to stand throughout the sentencing.

Mr Justice Weatherup also told him he would be recommending his deportation.

Boutrab, who police said has an allegiance to a terrorist group linked to the al-Qaida network, was the first suspected member of the Islamic extremists to be tried in Northern Ireland under the non-jury Diplock court system used for the trial of loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

During the investigation PSNI detectives sent the instructions they had seized to the FBI where one of the agents followed them and was able to construct a device capable of downing an aircraft.

At one stage during the trial an FBI expert gave a bomb-making master class to the court in Belfast.

A video of the results carried out at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia was also played.

It showed a bomb which when detonated blew apart a mocked-up row of airline seats and ripped through the aircraft shell beside them.