24 April 2012

Shoe-Bomber Tells Court Bin Laden Wanted Quick Follow-Up To 9/11

Briton’s shoe bomber, Saajid Badat, has told a federal jury in New York that Osama Bin Laden believed a follow-up terrorist incident to September 11 would have crippled the US economy.

Speaking in a video testimony Badat, who trained as a shoe bomber a decade ago, was recalling when he meet Bin Laden shortly after the attack on the US in 2001.

"He said the American economy is like a chain," Badat said. "If you break one link of the chain, the whole economy will be brought down. So after September 11 attacks, this operation will ruin the aviation industry and in turn the whole economy will come down."

33-year-old Badat was convicted in London in a 2001 plot to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes. His testimony came in the federal trial of a man accused in a 2009 plot to attack New York's subways with suicide bombs.

Badat said he was supposed to carry out a simultaneous bombing with failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid but he backed out because of his reluctance, fear and the effect it would have on his family. He said he informed his handler in Pakistan by email but never notified Bin Laden.

Arrested in November 2003, Badat is free after serving six years of an 11-year prison sentence. He testified that he began co-operating in part because he hoped to testify someday against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has claimed responsibility while in US custody as the architect of the September 11 attacks.

The videotape of his testimony was played just before the prosecution called to the witness stand a Long Island man who went to Pakistan in 2007 and joined al-Qaida forces in an attack against US soldiers.

(H)