St James's Hospital bomb trial: Man planned Leeds bombing because of work grievance not extremism, jury told

Mohammed Farooq, 28, was arrested in the grounds of St James’s Hospital in Leeds in January with a viable pressure cooker bomb modelled on a device used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack, prosecutors have told Sheffield Crown Court.

He went on trial on Monday accused of preparing acts of terrorism, which he denies.

On Tuesday, Farooq’s barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, told the jury: “You have heard that the defendant has pleaded guilty to a number of serious offences.

“He accepts searching for bomb-making instructions. He accepts making a viable bomb. He accepts at times being ready and willing to detonate that bomb at the hospital.”

Mr Hussain continued: “He has, however, pleaded not guilty to this allegation. He will say that his actions were not motivated by Islamist extremism.

“He was not radicalised. He will say his criminal actions were motivated by a deep-rooted – yet unjustified – sense of anger and grievance towards those that he worked with.”

Farooq had a grievance against several of his former colleagues at the St James’s Hospital and “had been conducting a poison pen campaign against them”, prosecutors have told the jury.

In his opening statement on Monday, Jonathan Sandiford KC told the court the defendant is a “self-radicalised, lone wolf terrorist who had made preparations to commit a murderous terrorist attack in Yorkshire”.

Mr Sandiford said Farooq was preparing to detonate a viable pressure cooker bomb when he was talked out of it by a patient, Nathan Newby, who was having a smoke outside St James’s Hospital on January 20.

He said Mr Newby’s actions “certainly saved many lives” as the defendant said he was intending to “kill as many nurses as possible”. The prosecutor said Farooq also intended to use an imitation firearm to incite police called to the scene to shoot him dead.

Mr Sandiford said the prosecution case is that Farooq was self-radicalised through the internet and had built the bomb after reading an article titled “Build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” by the “AQ chef”.

Farooq told police it was intended to be twice as powerful as the Boston bomb. Mr Sandiford said the defendant also intended to attack RAF Menwith Hill, a military base used by the United States in North Yorkshire, and made at least two visits to the site with the bomb.

But Farooq abandoned his plan to attack the base because it was too well protected and turned his attention to the hospital, the prosecutor said.

Mr Sandiford said an expert who examined the bomb found that, if it had gone off, he “would have expected a significant explosion with metal fragments being ejected at high speed indiscriminately, with the potential to cause serious injury or possible death”.

Farooq, who sat in the dock flanked by four prison officers, denies preparing acts of terrorism but has admitted a number of other offences, including possessing a pressure cooker bomb “with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property”.