Bomb maker found guilty of plotting MP attack

An al-qaeda bomb-maker has been found guilty of plotting a knife attack on MPS and police outside the Houses of Parliament.

Khalid Ali, 28, had three blades tucked into his clothes when he was arrested by armed police in Whitehall in April last year.

The plumber had been in the sights of counterterrorism police since he returned from Afghanistan where he spent five years making bombs to maim and kill coalition troops.

More than four months before his arrest, the FBI in the United States matched his fingerprints to two caches of explosives recovered by Afghan forces in 2012. Ali was yesterday found guilty of preparing terrorist acts in Britain and two charges of possessing explosive substances with intent to endanger life abroad.

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC told the jury Ali planned a “deadly terror attack at the very heart of this country’s democracy by killing a police officer, a member of the military or even a Parliamentarian”.

He said: “Chillingly, but for the interception of the defendant by police, he would have carried out yet another murderous terror attack in Westminster.”