Would-be shoe bomber to be sentenced today

A British man who has admitted a plot to blow up a passenger plane with a shoe bomb will be sentenced at London’s Old Bailey court today.

Saajid Badat, 25, of Gloucester, admitted in February to conspiring to cause an explosion on an aircraft between January 1999 and November 2003, with the same type of device used by Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight.

According to the online news provider Ananova, intelligence experts believe Badat and Reid had been conspiring together, and were planning an attack in December 2001.

While Reid was caught, arrested and jailed for life, Badat reportedly claimed to have changed his mind before dismantling his bomb.

However, police argued that he had intended to kill hundreds of people with the device by blowing up an aircraft between Europe and the US.

Badat has also reportedly been trained at an al Qaida “school” in Afghanistan, which Reid had also attended.

Report by Tim Gillett, News From Abroad Ltd