Briton ‘ built bombs to blow up US soldiers on Iraq patrols’
A BRITISH taxi driver made roadside bombs for use against soldiers in Iraq, a court heard yesterday.
Anis Abid Sardar, 38, allegedly travelled to Syria to help build devices that were laid with a ‘murderous intent’.
In September 2007, one detonated beneath a US patrol near Baghdad, killing Sergeant Randy Johnson, 34, and injuring his comrades.
It took investigators seven years to analyse fragments of the bombs and test for DNA traces before Sardar was charged last year.
Jurors at Woolwich Crown Court in London were told his fingerprints were found on some of the bombs – although not the one that killed Sgt Johnson. However, the prosecution said that his involvement meant was guilty of Sgt Johnson’s murder.
Prosecutor Max Hill QC said: ‘Whoever placed the bombs either intended to cause damage, injury and the death of US Army soldiers, or they took the risk that these things would happen because they intended that whomever travelled in heavy vehicles along these roads would be killed.’ He said it was ‘unnecessary for Sardar’s own fingermark to be left on the bomb’.
Sardar, from Wembley, north-west London, was also found with a bomb-making manual and was part of an insurgency cell which operated out of Damascus, Syria, during a time which Sardar claimed he was a student learning Arabic in the country.
With the help of another insurgent, Sajjid Adnan, they produced four improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that were placed along a road used by US troops leading out of Baghdad, it was alleged.
One of them detonated fully under a US military vehicle, tearing a whole in it, and killing Sgt Johnson. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. Following the incident, the IEDs were discovered on the road, which led from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib prison.
US bomb-disposal experts recovered the devices. On them, forensic experts discovered prints belonging to the accused.
Two of them had Sardar’s fingerprints on, while Adnan’s prints were discovered on all four, suggesting they were working together and with others, Mr Hill told jurors.
‘Anyone complicit in this activity would know that it represents an offence, of the most serious kind, to leave unexploded bombs beneath roads where others may travel,’ he added. ‘Therefore, the makers of these bombs are guilty of murder.’
Adnan was arrested, detained and jailed by the Iraqi authorities in the wake of the bombings, although his present whereabouts are ‘ unknown’, the court heard. Less than two months after the attack Sardar was stopped at Heathrow. His passport had been stamped at Damascus airport three days previously. He later claimed he had spent ten years in Damascus, from 1997 to 2007, and was in Syria to study Arabic. He said he had never been to Iraq.
In an unrelated raid on Sardar’s house in June 2012, a computer disk containing an Arabic document entitled ‘A Special Course in Manufacturing Explosives’ was seized. Its subtitle read ‘ For the fighting sect protesting the right until God’s will is implemented’.
Sardar denies murder, conspiracy to murder, and conspiracy to cause an explosion likely to endanger life. The trial continues.