Bilal Abdulla, the accused in the London and Glasgow car bombing trial, has told a jury that he “loved” England, considered it “home” and contemplated joining the British Army.
Abdulla, an Iraqi-UK citizen who was studying in Baghdad from the age of five, returned to the UK in 1999. However upon returning to the UK could not get on a medical course due to the cost. He had considered a career in the army as a way of contributing to his university fees.
When Abdulla returned to Iraq for his final exams, he said that he saw “children aged three, four, five and six with leukaemia, but without treatment". Abdulla blamed depleted uranium shells fired by the US in the first Gulf War for the leukaemia, and the sanctions placed on Saddam afterwards for the subsequent lack of treatment.
Bemoaning the rise in influence of Shia Muslims in Iraq following Saddam’s removal, Abdulla went on to say:
“After months of waiting for reform and change, I then started to see the discrimination that the Americans were taking over the country.
"The government was a Shia government, the army was a Shia army, the police were Shia and we had gangsters that were kidnapping girls from schools and killing them.
"We were not able to go to our universities and the country was literally in chaos, we did not have water, or electricity or anything at all."
Abdulla then went on to say that although he “supported the insurgency” in Iraq, he “did not have any hatred towards any individual person anywhere in this country [the UK] or other countries."
