Muslim convert Andrew Ibrahim made explosives and suicide bomb vest
Andrew Ibrahim was a sixth form student in Bristol
A Muslim convert made explosives and a suicide vest with the intention of blowing himself up in a terrorist attack, a court was told yesterday.
Andrew Ibrahim, 20, a sixth-form student from Bristol, converted to Islam in 2006 and became increasingly radicalised before attempting to build his suicide bomb last year. He changed his first name by deed poll to Isa and became fascinated by the July 7 bombings in London, the teachings of the jailed cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and the ideology of al-Qaeda.
When police raided his flat in April last year, they allegedly found high explosives in a biscuit tin in the fridge, a detonator under the kitchen sink and the suicide vest, fitted with pockets to carry the bombs, hanging on the bedroom door. Ibrahim denies manufacturing explosives with intent to endanger life and making preparations for a terrorist act by buying materials, making explosives and a detonator, improvising a suicide vest and carrying out target reconnaissance.
The jury at Winchester Crown Court was told that while he had pleaded guilty to a preparing an explosive substance, he denied any plan to kill, injure or cause damage.
“You may well wonder and doubt how a 19-year-old student from Bristol, as he then was, could become adherent to such an extreme ideology and make explosives with the intention of detonating them to cause life-threatening injury,” Mark Ellison, QC, for the prosecution, told the jury.
“But the evidence of what he did, what he said and what he spent quite a lot of effort searching out and collecting, will prove that he did so. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of others who had done just that as a demonstration of the strength of their beliefs.”
Ibrahim was living in a hostel in Bristol in 2007, telling people he met that he had been disowned by his parents because of drug problems.
He enrolled for A levels at City of Bristol College that year and fellow students remarked on his behaviour. Sometimes he would wear traditional Islamic dress and at one point grew a long beard. When he reverted to using drugs, he would dress in Western clothes. Around Christmas 2007, the court heard, Ibrahim told one classmate of his admiration for Abu Hamza while expressing anti-American views and praising suicide attacks. A student in his chemistry class was told that the Pentagon should be bombed and that nuclear weapons were “cool”. He asked a visiting biology lecturer which bacteria were best for killing people. At the same time Ibrahim began intensive research into radical Islam, which grew into learning online how to manufacture explosives.
In February, Mr Ellison said, he began to research how to make high explosive “from ingredients that could be sourced relatively easily by a member of the public”.
Mr Ellison said the “extremist mindset” that Ibrahim was embracing promoted “the ideology of martyrdom as the highest act of faith which brings great reward in Heaven”.
Mr Ellison said that, ten days before he was arrested, Ibrahim was recorded on CCTV walking around the Broadmead shopping centre in Bristol. He was found later to have made detailed notes on his mobile phone about the location of shops, cafés, lifts, escalators and exits.
The trial continues.