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.
The jury at Sheffield crown court has been told how a patient “saved many lives” when he talked down Farooq, who, the prosecution alleges, intended to “kill as many nurses as possible”.
Nathan Newby told police he spotted the defendant looking unhappy and went to lift his spirits. He said he asked Farooq what was in his bag and was told: “It’s just a bomb.”
In a video of Newby’s police interview, shown to jurors on Monday, he said: “He just looked upset, as though he’d had some really bad news.
“I’m quite good at judging people just by looking at them, I’m quite good at reading people’s body language. I just thought I’d go over and see if he’s all right. I thought, if he was down, I’d try and cheer him up.”
Newby described how he began to chat with Farooq, who told him he “just wanted to get them back” and pointed at the hospital.
He said the defendant described how he was either a student or had worked at the hospital for two years but had “lost everything and just wanted to get them back for what they’d done”.
Newby said Farooq told him: “They’ve stabbed me in the back. They’ve fucked me over.”
He told the officers that the defendant was agitated and kept looking down at a bag. Newby asked Farooq what was in bag and “he said, ‘It’s just a bomb”’ and that he planned to detonate it in the hospital canteen.
“He was just going to set it off and walk out,” Newby said. “I was quite shocked. I thought, ‘Wow.’ I’m looking at what he said was a bomb.
“I just started talking to try and keep him calm. My priority was to get him away from the hospital.”
Newby told the officers how he persuaded Farooq to move to a bench, where he talked to him for a long time. “I was talking to keep him calm,” he said. “I didn’t want him flipping.”
Farooq eventually said he wanted to hand himself in and called 999, Newby told police. During the call, the defendant produced a handgun, which later turned out to be an imitation.
Prosecutors have told the jury that the pressure cooker bomb Farooq had with him was a viable device, modelled on one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attacks.
Farooq denies preparing acts of terrorism, although he has admitted a number of other offences including possessing a pressure cooker bomb “with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property”.
The jury has also been told that Farooq had a grievance against several of his former colleagues at St James’s hospital.
The defence barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, has told the court his client was “ready and willing” to detonate the homemade bomb at the hospital because of a “sense of anger and grievance” towards work colleagues but was not motivated by Islamist extremism.
