A former public schoolboy accused of making his own suicide vest using home-made explosives described in court how he became interested in explosives to make himself ‘cool’ and ‘popular’.
Isa Ibrahim, formerly known as Andrew in his school days, also told the court he started using hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine while at school and played online computer games for extended periods.
He went on to describe how he would play and interact with his collection of teddy bears until he was 18.
Appearing at Winchester Crown Court today, the 20-year-old denies making an explosive with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the UK in April 2008.
He also denies a charge of preparing terrorist acts by purchasing material to make an explosive, making that explosive, buying material to detonate the explosive, carrying out ‘reconnaissance’ before the act, and ‘making an improvised suicide vest’.
Ibrahim pleaded guilty to a third charge of making an explosive substance.
The prosecution claims he was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack on the Broadmead shopping centre in Bristol.
Ibrahim told the court that when he was only 12 or 13, he began researching about explosives, extremist groups and conspiracy theories because they were ‘controversial’.
The trial heard that he became increasingly radicalised after converting to Islam and consequently changed his name from Andrew Philip Michael Ibrahim.
He spent several months researching Islamic fundamentalism on the internet including the motivation behind suicide attacks.
He also used the internet to find instructions on how to make explosives from household products such as hydrogen peroxide, the court heard.
The trial was also told he had described the UK as a ‘dirty toilet’ and he believed the 9/11 attacks were a justifiable response to U.S. and UK aggression towards Muslims.
Ibrahim said he did not have many friends and wanted to create a better self-image of himself.
‘It was the fact that they were controversial, they made me feel a bit cooler, I didn’t have friends or a social life but by looking at these files it made me feel a bit cooler,’ Ibrahim told the court.
‘I felt not so sad, as such a loser. It made me feel better and bigger and a cooler person.’
But Ibrahim told the court that despite several failed experiments to create explosives, he had never intended to set off a bomb, blow himself up or injure another person.
He also told the court he was expelled from three schools for taking drugs and for acting inappropriately.
Ibrahim told how he was expelled from Queen Elizabeth Hospital independent boys’ school in Bristol on the day before his 13th birthday for taking cannabis.
He said he was then expelled from Colston’s School for smacking girls on the bottom.
‘It wasn’t anything sexual, I wanted the reaction,’ Ibrahim said.
He also told the court he imitated the South Park cartoon Cartman in one class by cutting off some of his pubic hairs and sticking them on his chin.
Ibrahim told the trial he was then expelled from the Downside boarding school in Bath, run by Catholic monks, for drug taking before sitting his GCSEs at Bristol Cathedral School.
He progressed from cannabis to Ecstasy, to the horse tranquilliser ketamine before he became addicted to heroin and crack cocaine with up to a £60-a-day habit.
Ibrahim’s parents Nassif Ibrahim, a consultant pathologist, and his mother, Victoria, a university administrator, separated when he was 16, around the time he was taking his GCSE exams.
He said: ‘I did blame myself.’
The trial heard that when Ibrahim was arrested, a quantity of home-made highly explosive, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), was found in a container in the fridge of his home.
Also found in his one-bedroom flat was an electrical circuit capable of detonating the explosive as well as a suicide vest, the court was told.
The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.
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