By IANS
Bangalore : Parents of Indian doctor Sabeel Ahmed, who has confessed to withholding information on the Glasgow Airport terror plot last year, are happy their son is returning home soon and has not been found guilty of involvement in any terror act in Britain.
“My son is innocent and we are happy he is coming back,” his doctor mother Zakhia Ahmed told reporters here Saturday.
Sabeel Ahmed, a doctor from Bangalore, was sentenced to 18 months in jail Friday after admitting he failed to inform the police about his brother’s suicide bombing of Glasgow airport June 30 last year, when his brother Kafeel Ahmed drove a Jeep Cherokee filled with propane canisters into the airport terminal and set it alight.
However, the burning vehicle failed to break through the glass doors and no one was injured, although Kafeel Ahmed subsequently died of burns.
Judge Calvert-Smith of the Old Bailey court agreed there was no sign of Sabeel Ahmed being an extremist or party to extremist views.
“Our faith that Sabeel is innocent and got trapped in a controversy has been vindicated,” said Zakhia, a retired professor of medicine.
She said she has no information yet on when Sabeel would reach Bangalore.
Zakhia has made contradictory statement on whether the man who drove the jeep was indeed her elder son Kafeel Ahmed.
B.T. Venkatesh, an advocate who has been assisting the family in the case, said he has no official information yet about Sabeel being deported to India immediately.
“I have not contacted the family. Sabeel’s lawyers in London have also not contacted me on this,” he told IANS on being asked what advice he has offered the family following Sabeel’s confession and the British plan to deport him.