Briton admits plot to destroy plane with shoe bomb

THE counter-terrorism chief at London’s Scotland Yard last night hailed a very important conviction after a British suicide bomber admitted plotting to blow up a passenger jet with a shoe bomb.

Former grammar school pupil Saajid Badat, 25, had an identical device to the one used by fellow Briton Richard Reid when he attempted to bring down a flight from Paris to Miami.

Intelligence services believe the two had been conspiring together, and had plotted to bring down passenger aircraft at similar times in late December 2001. A piece of detonating cord from Reid’s bomb matched that of Badat’s.