A former British Airways Plc software engineer was found guilty of plotting with Anwar al- Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric who supports violence against U.S. targets, to blow up a passenger plane.
Rajib Karim, 31, was found guilty of preparing to commit terrorism by a jury trial in London, the Crown Prosecution Service said in an e-mailed statement today. Karim joined British Airways in its information-technology department in Newcastle, England, a year after arriving in the U.K. from Bangladesh in 2006. He started with the intent to plan attacks, prosecutors said.
Karim contacted Al-Awlaki in late 2009, and the two began plotting “to kill hundreds of innocent people,” said Colin Gibbs, a CPS prosecutor. “They also discussed his potential to sabotage BA servers to cause disruption to flights, which would have resulted in a major financial loss.”
At British Airways, Karim “kept a low-profile,” while at home he was making violent propaganda videos for a terrorist group in Bangladesh, London’s Metropolitan Police said. He worked with his younger brother, Tehzeeb Karim, and two others to raise money for al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations involved in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, police said.
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