Patient talked Leeds hospital worker out of detonating bomb, court told

Nathan Newby said that when he asked Mohammed Farooq, pictured, what was in his bag, he was told: ‘It’s just a bomb.’ Photograph: Counter Terrorism Policing North East/PA

A hospital worker was talked out of detonating a homemade bomb to kill his colleagues when a patient thought he looked upset and tried to “cheer him up”, a court has heard.

Mohammed Farooq, 28, is accused of planning a terrorist atrocity at St James’s hospital in Leeds, where he was found with a viable pressure cooker explosive on 20 January.