A trainee nurse who was found guilty of planning a terror plot to bomb a Leeds hospital has been jailed for life at Sheffield Crown Court.
Mohammad Farooq, who took a viable pressure cooker bomb into a Leeds hospital intending to “kill as many nurses as possible”, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 37 years.
Farooq, 28, from Leeds, was arrested outside St James’ Hospital in the city with the bomb - designed to be doubly as powerful as those used by the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013.
Before his sentencing, Sheffield Crown Court heard how Farooq had immersed himself in an “extremist Islamic ideology” and went to the hospital to “seek his own martyrdom” through a “murderous terrorist attack”.
Mohammad Farooq, 28, from Leeds, was arrested outside St James’s HospitalCPS/PASentencing the 28-year-old at Sheffield Crown Court, Justice Cheema-Grubb said: "You were disillusioned in your own life, both personally and professionally, having failed to achieve the standard of work to become a nurse."
The court heard "nearly 10kg of explosives" had been put inside the pressure cooker by Farooq, who then texted a nurse to tell her the bomb was on the ward.
He wanted to "detonate the bomb when the canteen was full of nurses and walk out", the judge added.
The judge also lauded the actions of Nathan Newby, who was the patient who talked Farooq out of exploding his home-made device.
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The device at scene at St James's Hospital
Counter Terrorism Policing North East
Photo of a bag near a bench outside St James’s Hospital in Leeds which was recovered at the time of Mohammad Farooq's arrest
Counter Terrorism Policing North East
Farooq told Newby about his grievances towards his colleagues and his plan to take the bomb into the hospital.
During the sentencing the judge said: “He’s an extraordinary, ordinary man whose decency and kindness on January 20 2023, prevented an atrocity in a maternity wing of a major British hospital.”
She said Newby was a “modest and gentle man whose evidence was among the most remarkable this court has ever heard”.
Addressing Farooq, she said: "You are a dangerous offender."
Farooq told Newby about his grievances towards his colleagues and his plan to take the bomb into the hospital.
PA
"The kind thoughtfulness of a passing stranger saved you and the people you targeted."
An investigation found he had become self-radicalised through accessing extremist material online, and had obtained bomb-making instructions in a magazine published by Al-Qaeda to encourage lone wolf terrorist attacks against the West.
Prosecutors previously said that Farooq had originally intended to attack RAF Menwith Hill - a North Yorkshire military base used by the US that had been identified as a target by Isis.
When he thought that was not possible, Farooq then switched to the “softer and less well-protected target” of St James’s Hospital in the early hours of January 20, 2023.
