London
A second British man pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to blow up an airliner with a bomb in his shoe. Saajid Badat, 25, had a bomb just like the one that British citizen Richard Reid tried to ignite on an American Airlines flight, in 2001. But Badat backed out of the plot and did not board the flight he was supposed to bring down. Still, he could face life in prison. “We must ask,” said Peter Clarke of Scotland Yard, “how a young British man was transformed from an intelligent, articulate person who was well respected into a person who has pleaded guilty to one of the most serious crimes.” Badat grew up in Britain and went to British schools, before traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train with al Qaida.
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