Jihadist faces life for Elton John nail bomb plot
A JIHADIST who plotted a nail bomb attack at an Elton John concert was facing a life sentence last night.
Haroon Syed, 19, also planned to target crowds outside Buckingham Palace and shoppers in Oxford Street.
The teenager wanted to cause carnage on the scale of the 2005 London bombings which claimed the lives of 52 innocent victims.
Syed first opted for a devastating machine gun attack, the Old Bailey heard. But he switched to a homemade bomb with “lots of nails inside” when he failed to raise the cash to buy automatic weapons.
Searching the internet for likely targets, he singled out Elton John’s gig in London’s Hyde Park.
The concert, on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, was attended by 50,000 people. Syed’s brother Nadir, 24, is serving life for plotting to behead a poppyseller or a police community support officer on Remembrance Sunday 2014.
The teenager’s evil plan was thwarted by an MI5 spy who posed as a fellow extremist who could help him get hold of weapons and bombs.
Slaughter
Using the alias Abu Yusuf, the undercover officer chatted to Syed via an encrypted messaging service and later met him.
Syed considered martyrdom but decided to slaughter as many people as possible with a remote-controlled bomb.
He handed over £150 to Yusuf at a meeting in August last year and said: “The brothers must make this bomb really strong. It has to be powerful.” The MI5 man told Syed the device would be ready to collect in a few days, the court heard.
Syed claimed he was addicted to violent computer games and treated the gun or bomb attack as a fantasy.
He claimed he never had any intention to carry out a terror attack and only wanted to see “how far it would go”.
He accused undercover officers of entrapping him.
Judge Michael Topolski, QC, yesterday refused an application by defence lawyers to exclude evidence gathered through his conversations with Yusuf from his forthcoming trial.
His ruling prompted Syed, of Hounslow, west London, to plead guilty to preparing a terrorist act.
He will be sentenced next month.