High Court in Edinburgh Stops Conviction of Wannabe Bomber

It now seems that the judges at the High Court in Edinburgh have repressed the conviction of a student branded as a wannabe suicide bomber. The student, Mohammed Atif Siddique from Alva, Clackmannanshire, was released after prosecutors said they would not be seeing a retrial.

There was a very emotional scene as the 24-year-old was reunited with his family outside the court house. Siddique was the first person in Scotland to be found guilty of Islamic terror offenses. He was convicted back in October of 2007 of two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000. He was also convicted of one under the Terrorism Act of 2006 and a breach of the peace, being sentenced to eight years in prison.

He was found guilty under the main charge of possessing articles which gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that they were for the preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism. Apparently the young man had collected videos and material from the internet about guerrilla tactics and bomb making.

At Glasgow Metropolitan College, where the young man was studying, he had threatened to become a suicide bomber and blow up Glasgow. Last month, three senior judges, said Siddique had suffered a miscarriage of justice when the trail judge misdirected the jury.

Now the judges have overturned the conviction, which let him off six years early from his sentence. Siddique went on to say that he has always maintained his innocence, but they took his liberty. They destroyed my family’s reputation and labeled him as a terrorist. However, he said that he had never had any bombs or plans to hurt anyone.