Zahid Hussain, 29, sentenced to minimum of 15 years after scouting target and attempting to assemble explosives

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An Islamic State supporter who planned to blow up railway lines using a bomb built with Christmas tree lights has been jailed for at least 15 years.

Zahid Hussain, 29, a former nightclub doorman, was caught on CCTV climbing into a storm drain under the mainline out of Birmingham to London as he researched possible targets.

His pressure cooker bomb, packed with 1.6kg (3.5lb) of shrapnel, would have caused a “significant explosion” and multiple fatalities had it been viable, a judge said on Monday.

Sentencing Hussain to life imprisonment with a minimum of 15 years, Mr Justice Sweeney said: “You are a dangerous offender and in the view of the level of the danger that you pose and the impossibility of predicting when it will come to an end, this is an appropriate case in which to impose a sentence of life imprisonment.”

Jurors at Birmingham crown court heard that Hussain became radicalised while viewing hundreds of Isis images and videos of the war in Syria.

He used a bedroom in his parents’ home as his “base of operations and improvised laboratory” where he researched and attempted to assemble explosives, and he carried out reconnaissance of woods near the house in Alum Rock, Birmingham.

In the days before his arrest, Hussain made repeated visits to a section of the high-speed rail line that links London to Birmingham, which prosecutors said was to research a possible target.

He was arrested on 9 August 2015 after reports of a man “patrolling” the streets carrying a hammer and crowbar near his parents’ house.

When police searched the property they found books on guerrilla warfare, including one that talked of mounting attacks on railways, in which a page on how to derail a train had been marked.

Officers also found handwritten recipes for explosives and a hand-drawn map showing a drainage chamber.

Hussain had attempted to create a remote-control detonator with a wireless doorbell, and successfully made four igniters from fairy lights for his device.

He told police he had intended to sell the bomb to the Sun newspaper and that his dabbling with explosives was mere “experimentation”.

But the judge told Hussain it was clear he had been “strongly committed” to carrying out multiple bombings.

“If detonated in a crowded area it would have been potentially fatal to those within metres of it and would have potentially caused serious injury among those up to 10 metres away,” Sweeney said.

“In your case, culpability is extremely high as more than one explosion was clearly intended, and the harm to be caused was ultimately loss of life or serious injury to the person.

“You were clearly deeply radicalised and, over a period of at least nine months, were strongly committed to what you were doing.”

Jurors were told Hussain held a pronounced interest in Isis and had viewed hundreds of images showing the terrorist group’s actions, and others showing Osama bin Laden and the Boston bombers – who successfully used pressure cooker bombs.

Sweeney said he had taken account of psychiatric issues but had “some doubts as to the genuineness of your mental illness”. However, he concluded that on the evidence and reports of several expert psychiatric reports, Hussain had – at the time of the offence, and still now – paranoid schizophrenia.

The judge said his offending “was only partly attributable to that disorder”, finding that the “principal driver” had been his “voluntary bedroom radicalisation”.