BELFAST, Northern Ireland – An Algerian man was convicted Thursday of possessing information on making a concealed bomb that could be used to blow up a commercial airliner.
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Abbas Boutrab, 32, had claimed during his trial he had downloaded the information onto 25 computer disks out of simple curiosity.
But Belfast Crown Court Justice Ronnie Weatherup found him guilty of possessing information likely to be of use to terrorists, and said he was «satisfied that his possession of the material was not out of curiosity but was for terrorist purposes.»
Weatherup said he would sentence Boutrab next month. Police initially arrested him in 2003 on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, but found the bomb instructions during a search of his home.
During his monthlong trial, prosecutors said Boutrab was suspected of links to the al-Qaida terrorist network, and cited telephone records and unspecified documents seized at his home in the Belfast suburb of Newtownabbey. But these suspicions didn’t form part of the charges against him.
His case was heard by a single judge without a jury, the system ordinarily used in Northern Ireland to prosecute alleged members of the province’s homegrown terror groups.
During the trial, FBI explosives expert Donald Sachtleben testified that he had built and successfully detonated three bombs based on the instructions found in Boutrab’s home. He said the mixture used could have been disguised in a bottle of baby powder.
Sachtleben said tests demonstrated that the bottle bombs could be detonated in a car or in an airplane. He said the last test demonstrated that the explosion could tear apart nearby passenger seats and puncture the plane’s fuselage.
He said such a bomb «would be likely to cause significant damage to the aircraft and cause injury or death to the persons on board.» He said such a bomb would be «more likely to cause catastrophic failure» if it detonated in a pressurized cabin at high altitude.
He said «a person of average intelligence and average mechanical skills» could use the manual found in Boutrab’s home to do this. He said a battery in a portable CD player could be used to aid detonation.
At the time of his arrest, Boutrab was seeking work in Northern Ireland using a false passport in the name of Fabio Parenti, an Italian tourist whose passport was stolen at Dublin airport on Sept. 1, 2001 — just days before the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Prosecutors said Boutrab had unsuccessfully sought asylum in the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland, using several aliases.
