THE DAY TERROR CAME TO SCOTLAND
David Swindle was watching the news at home when the story broke. An hour later he was standing outside the terminal as the senior investigating officer trying to get to grips with an ongoing terrorist incident he now describes as ..
IT’S 10 years since two bombers tried to kill hundreds of innocents at Glasgow Airport – but the memories are still fresh for the heroes of that day. From the complex and speedy police investigation to the ordinary citizens who stepped up to the plate in our hour of need, the nation still owes them all a debt of gratitude. Over the next five days, we will look back at that terrible time when terror came to Scotland and speak to the men and women who met the threat head-on. Today, we hear from the man who led the investigation into the terror attack by two extremists who tried to drive their explosive-laden Jeep into the airport terminal on June 30, 2007. It’s the first time former detective David Swindle has spoken publicly about the attack and its aftermath.
GLOBAL terrorism arrived in Scotland 10 years ago this week – and good fortune alone prevented carnage on an unimaginable scale.
Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, 27, and Indian engineer Kafeel Ahmed, 28, were unlikely extremists. But inspired by al-Qaeda, they planned to turn a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas canisters and petrol cans into a massive mobile bomb.
The audacious attack on Glasgow Airport was launched at 3.13pm on Saturday, June 30, 2007, as thousands of passengers queued in the departure hall to check in.
Within minutes, footage of the blazing Jeep, which Ahmed crashed into a concrete stanchion at 30mph, was being beamed across the world.
Detective Superintendent David Swindle was watching Sky News at home when the story broke.
An hour later, he was standing outside the terminal building as the senior investigating officer trying to comprehend what had happened.
In the months that followed, Swindle was at the heart of Operation Seagram, a fast-moving investigation that reached as far as Australia.
To mark the 10th anniversary, the former detective agreed to speak publicly about the attack for the first time and reveal what went on behind the scenes.
He told the Record: “This was the first time there was a determined effort to kill people using a vehicle. “When that Jeep was driven into the front of the airport, there was total chaos and alarm. CCTV footage graphically illustrates the horror and the fear experienced by people getting ready to go on their family holidays.
“You can see the terror that it caused for the people inside the airport. They were screaming and running for their lives.”
When the SUV failed to explode, the bombers launched Molotov cocktails at it – but Ahmed only succeeded in igniting himself.
As stunned holidaymakers looked on, have-a-go heroes and police officers tackled the fanatics and prevented them from detonating the canisters.
Abdulla, the mastermind of the plot, was taken to Govan Police Station while Ahmed – who had suffered 90 per cent burns – was admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley in a critical condition.
Glasgow Airport was immediately placed in lockdown, immigration controls were suspended and it was declared a no-fly zone.
Swindle’s first priority was to take an overview of a scene and a situation he described as “organised chaos”.
He said: “I was thinking in my head, ‘What are we going to do with this?’
“It wasn’t like a murder when you arrive on the scene and there is a body. It was a live, ongoing incident.
“I had to draw on all my experience of running major investigations and pull together a team with expertise. You have to trust and empower the people who are around you.
“I also had people who were on holiday contacting me and asking, ‘Can I help? I’ll come off my holidays.’ The professionalism of police officers and detectives is reflected in the fact that so many wanted to be involved.”
Public safety was Swindle’s No1 priority and it was vital to establish if any other terrorists were loose at the scene.
As a result, more than 4000 people who were inside the building at the time had to be searched and then interviewed in a controlled environment.
Renfrewshire Council and local coach companies helped bus the passengers to the SECC in Glasgow. The then Scotland manager Alex McLeish and 90 foreign nationals who had just arrived in Scotland were among those questioned.
Inside the eerily quiet terminal building, a separate team were appointed to log the thousands of cases and bags that had been abandoned when the attackers struck.
Other exhibits ranged from the contents of the Jeep to the Nike trainers hero taxi driver Alex McIlveen used to boot one of the terrorists in the privates.
Swindle had to take steps to record the volume of information that was coming at him from all angles.
He recalled: “One of the important things was to appoint someone as a scribe. As I was walking about, speaking to people, there were things coming in everywhere.
“It is very important to note what is being said. No matter how good a memory you have got, you can never deal with such a mass of information.
“I had a police officer following me about everywhere, taking notes.
“It was a huge, huge pressure cooker of an investigation.”
Running parallel to the investigation was a massive intelligence operation.
Britain’s elite anti-terrorism unit were already hot on the fanatics’ tail over bungled car bombs in London the day before the Glasgow attack.
Four Nokia phones left in the two vehicles yielded information that enabled
If it hadn’t been for a concrete stanchion, there would have been fatalities DAVID SWINDLE
officers from the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 branch to hunt the pair based on the movements of a SIM card. On the morning of the airport attack, the Jeep was spotted by walkers in the car park at Milarrochy Bay on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond. By lunchtime, the pair were heading to Glasgow. And at 1.47pm, Kafeel sent his brother, Sabeel, a text message instructing him to visit a Google email account where he would find a full explanation of what was about to happen. Meanwhile, the net was closing in. SO15’s proximity to the bombers was illustrated by the fact a team were at the airport within minutes of the attack.
Earlier that day, Strathclyde Police had contacted a letting agency used by Abdulla. And, separately, officers were at a taxi office in Paisley searching their records as the bombers struck.
A key priority was establishing if the men were acting alone or as part of a network.
The bomb factory was identified on Saturday night and armed officers were on standby when a semi-detached house in Neuk Crescent, Houston, Renfrewshire, was raided at 4.40am the next day.
As Glasgow Airport partially re-opened for business at 6am on the Sunday, the Operation Seagram control room was moved from Paisley to Scotland’s most secure police station in Govan.
Police later swooped to arrest two men, aged 25 and 28, in Paisley. Both were medical students working at the Royal Alexandra.
Ahmed’s brother Sabeel was arrested in Liverpool.
After a Cobra meeting in London, then PM Gordon Brown raised the threat level from severe to critical.
On the Monday, a doctor was detained at Brisbane Airport in Australia while trying to board a plane to India. Later in the week, five more doctors were questioned and computers were seized from four hospitals in Western Australia.
In Scotland, controlled explosions were carried out on vehicles at the Royal Alexandra and a car outside the Forth Street Mosque in Pollokshields, Glasgow.
More than 500 officers worked on the massive inquiry and Swindle liaised closely with Detective Superintendent Clive Timmons, his opposite number at the Met. A team of CCTV analysts were sent to join their counterparts in London, who had honed their skills during the 7/7 bombings two years earlier.
This was to prove a critical pillar of the investigation.
Swindle said: “We had to scope where they had been and obtain CCTV. This was a vital part of mapping their movements and pulling all the sightings together.
“The investigation paved the way for a dedicated CCTV unit here.”
The computer crime aspect of the investigation was also huge.
Swindle said: “The hard drive of one the laptops was burned in the Jeep. Despite this, the investigators still managed to obtain information from it.
“There was a determination to try to go below the radar and there was a determination to cover their tracks.”
Swindle believes the attack on Glasgow Airport was spontaneous.
He said: “They failed in London and there was determination to do something.
“They chose an easy target and they chose it at the maximum time, as it was the first day of the school holidays.
“If it hadn’t been for a concrete stanchion, the Jeep would have entered the terminal building. You can never know how many, but there would have been fatalities.
“Also, if it had not been for the intervention of people at the scene, they might still have been able to cause harm.
“This type of attack, with gas canisters, happened all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“But we had never seen it here until the failed bomb plot in London and the attack on Glasgow Airport.
“It is something I will never forget.”