US informant played key role in "British bomb plot"

LONDON, Apr 30 (Reuters) A US citizen who had plotted to assassinate the Pakistani president played a central role in convicting five Britons found guilty at a London court today of plotting bomb attacks.

The main prosecution witness in the year-long trial, dubbed the ''British bomb plot'' by US officials, was a 32-year-old militant turned informant named Mohammed Junaid Babar.

Babar was born in Pakistan and moved to New York as a child.

He studied pharmacy at the city's St John's University and had planned to go to medical school but dropped out.

Babar said he had become radicalised by the first Gulf War which followed Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

''I did not like the Americans moving into Saudi Arabia and other Muslim lands to achieve their objective,'' he said.

He moved from one radical group to another until he joined Al Muhajiroun (ALM), an organisation that believes Muslims should fight back against those who oppose Islam.

He cited two of his main influences as Omar Bakri Mohammed and Abu Hamza, dubbed ''preachers of hate'' by the British media.

Bakri is a cleric banned in 2005 from returning to Britain after being ruled a security risk. Hamza, accused by US authorities of terrorism offences, was jailed last year for inciting his followers to murder non-believers.

VIOLENT JIHAD Babar, a stocky, bearded man who wore glasses while in court, said the two men's teachings had helped him become a believer in violent jihad.

''Jihad means to me to physically fight,'' he said.

It was the September 11 attacks that prompted him to act, even though his mother had been in one of the World Trade Center towers when it was struck. She survived, and he decided to go to Afghanistan to fight US forces.

It was in Pakistan that he met some of the Britons who plotted to carry out the bombings. His home in Lahore became a beacon for young, radicalised Muslims, mainly from Britain. He said he stockpiled weapons and bomb-making material there along with ingredients for making the deadly poison ricin.

The court also heard Babar was involved in two plots to assassinate Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, the first in 2002 and the second a year later.

In 2004 he pleaded guilty in a court in New York to smuggling money and military supplies to an al Qaeda figure in Pakistan. A plea deal led to him giving evidence against the seven Britons in the London trial where he was granted immunity from prosecution.

Defence lawyers accused him of lying to get himself out of trouble.

Babar admitted under cross examination he would have been jailed for life in the United States or received a possible death sentence in Pakistan had he been extradited.

REUTERS SS RS1838