An Islamist who worked as a British Airways computer expert was jailed for 30 years on Friday for plotting with a radical cleric to blow up a plane bound for the United States. Rajib Karim, 31, was convicted last month of plotting with Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant known to be associated with al Qaeda, to blow up an aircraft in a spectacular attack.
He shared information with al-Awlaki - one of the world's most wanted men - offered to help financial or disruptive attacks on BA, and gained a British job to exploit terrorist purposes, his trial heard. In the most "chilling" element of the case, he had even tried to use industrial action by cabin crew as a means of getting a job on board an aircraft, prosecutors said.
"You are and were a committed jihadist who understood his duty to his religion involves fighting and, God-willing, dying and then being rewarded in the afterlife," the judge, Justice Calvert-Smith, told Karim. "It is a feature of this case that none of those who worked with you at British Airways had even the slightest notion of what was going on." Karim's lawyer argued that his client's actions were embryonic and there was little certainty about what would have happened.
But Calvert-Smith said Karim, who was found guilty of four counts of engaging in preparation for terrorist attacks, "would have felt it was his duty to carry out jihad" had the infrastructure been in place, the Press Association reported.
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