A LONE wolf who took a bomb to the hospital he worked at in a chilling plot to kill as many nurses as possible has been jailed.
Mohammad Farooq, 28, hatched a gruesome plan to launch an ISIS-inspired suicide attack after becoming immersed in “extremist Islamic ideology”.
The trainee nurse went to St James’s Hospital in Leeds with a pressure cooker bomb in a bid to “seek his own martyrdom”.
But his plot was foiled by a “simple act of kindness” from a patient, who persuaded him to abandon the plan after engaging him in conversation.
Farooq has now been jailed for life with a minimum of 37 years after being convicted of preparing terrorist acts.
He had previously admitted having an explosive substance with intent and a firearms charge.
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Sheffield Crown Court heard Farooq initially planned a “lone wolf” terror attack on an RAF base in Yorkshire but switched targets after conducting a series of reconnaissance trips.
He had followed guidance in a terrorist manual titled “safety and security guidelines for lone wolf mujahedeen and small cells”.
This advised him to have two plans for the atrocity – a “Plan A”, and a “Plan B” – in case the first was not possible.
In January 2023, he went to the hospital he worked at armed with a viable bomb that would have been twice as powerful as those used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack.
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Farooq, who also had two knives, black tape and an imitation firearm with blank ammunition, messaged a colleague with a bomb threat in an attempt to lure staff and patients outside.
He then planned to detonate the bomb – killing himself in the process – but the text was not read for an hour-and-a-half.
Instead, Farooq was interrupted by Nathan Newby, a patient at the hospital, who had popped out to get some air.
He realised “something was amiss” after spotting the wannabe jihadi and bravely began talking to Farooq.
Mr Newby said they had a “totally normally chat” before Farooq unzipped his bag and asked him: “Do you like that?”
The patient moved Farooq away from the hospital entrance and three hours later, persuaded him to let him call the police.
Afterwards Mr Newby told police: “I was shocked I had managed to talk him out of it. I reached out my hand, I gave him a hug and said mate you’ve done the right thing, to try and keep him calm.
“I thought what would have happened if I had wrestled him to the floor and he got agitated – a lot of what ifs.”
The court heard Farooq admitted to police that he had made the bomb while in his car at night.
Officers discovered he had watched antisemitic videos on TikTok and had taken a photograph on his phone of a plaque that commemorated Jewish links to the hospital.
They also found he had carried out a secret poison pen campaign against several colleagues.
The hate campaign came after Farooq was made to repeat a year of his course because he regularly called in sick and failed his exams.
Bethan David, head of the Crown Prosecution Service‘s counter terrorism division, said: “Farooq is an extremely dangerous individual who amassed a significant amount of practical and theoretical information that enabled him to produce a viable explosive device.
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“He then took that homemade explosive device to a hospital where he worked with the intention to cause serious harm.
“The extremist views Farooq holds are a threat to our society, and I am pleased the jury found him guilty of his crimes.”
