Police say they have no idea what to do when they survived.

Jul 6, 2007
Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The men who rammed a fuel-laden jeep into Glasgow airport in Scotland wanted to die in a suicide bombing and had no idea what to do when they survived, police officers who subdued them said on Thursday.

The Glasgow attack has been linked to a suspected al Qaeda car bomb plot in London, though it is believed that mobile phones, not suicide bombers, were to detonate the London bombs.

"My impression is that they (the Glasgow attackers) only had a Plan A, and not a Plan B," said Sergeant Torquil Campbell, a Scottish police officer who used CS spray to overpower one of the men.

"The plan was to explode their vehicle and that they would go up with it. The fact that they were still alive probably perplexed them a bit and they really didn't know what to do after that," he told Sky News television.

Police Constable Stewart Ferguson, who was off duty and chatting to Campbell when the jeep smashed into the airport on Saturday, used an extinguisher to douse the attacker who stepped from the jeep on fire.

"This chap was ablaze, totally engulfed in flame," he said. "He was lying on his back. It sounds dramatic, but he appeared as if he had resigned himself to death."

That man, who has not been named by police, was severely burned and is in critical condition in the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow.

The other jeep occupant, named by police sources as Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi-trained doctor, is being held with five other suspects in London.

Ferguson, 40, who was at the airport to pick up his parents, said the burning man, once his flaming clothes were extinguished, tried to prevent people from reaching the jeep.

"He was kind of staggering, lurching, you could almost say drunkenly, towards the members of the public and Sergeant Campbell, trying to throw these haymaker-type, heavyweight boxer-type punches," he said.

Asked how he felt having saved the life of a potential suicide bomber, Ferguson said: "We can take some satisfaction that we delivered both accused alive to the inquiry team."

British police investigating the suspected car bomb plot have found a suicide note left by one of the men who crashed the jeep in Glasgow, U.S. broadcaster CNN reported on Thursday.

» Have your say on this and other issues in our forum pages