Al-Qaida terrorist gets life for plotting carnage

A BRITISH al-Qaida terrorist was jailed for a minimum of 40 years yesterday for plotting death and carnage on a “colossal and unprecedented” scale in massive atrocities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Muslim convert Dhiren Barot, 34, led a conspiracy to murder thousands of “wholly innocent men, women and children” in the United States and Britain and his plot was designed to strike “at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state”.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, added that if successful, Barot’s murderous plans for a series of September 11-style synchronised terror attacks would have affected “thousands personally, millions indirectly and ultimately the whole nations of the US and the UK”.

He jailed the former north London schoolboy for life at Woolwich Crown Court in London yesterday and said he would have to serve at least 40 years in jail before being considered for release.

Mr Butterfield explained that had he given Barot a determinate sentence he would have received 80 years, and that therefore his life tariff would be set at half that.

Barot, one of the most senior al-Qaida terrorists ever captured by British security agencies and a key lieutenant of the network’s leading figures, sat impassively as the judge announced the massive jail term.

At the end of the sentencing, he simply picked up a bundle of papers before being led away by several court officers to begin his incarceration. The minimum 40-year tariff means Barot will be almost 75 by the time he is released.

His two-day sentencing hearing had heard how he prepared two terror atrocities in meticulous detail for the approval of his al-Qaida “overlords”.

The first was to collapse five key financial institutions in Washington, New York and Newark, using explosives-packed limousines in underground car parks or by ramming oil tankers into them.

His second was aimed at Britain, and involved a repeat of the limousines plan, together with al-Qaida’s first dirty bomb, a gas attack on the Heathrow Express and a plot to blow up a Tube train under the Thames.

His horrific terror plots were set out like “business plans, as if corporate reports going to head office”.

The head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch, Peter Clarke, described Barot as a “full-time terrorist”.

Mr Clarke said: “For well over two years we have been unable to show the British public the reality of the threat they faced from this man. Now they can see for themselves the full horror of his plan.”