Dhiren Barot who plotted to kill thousands in Britain and the United States has been sentenced to 40 years imprisonment.
The London Times writes that Britons need to know about the fanaticism that threatens them. The Face of Terror.
The 40-year sentence imposed yesterday on Dhiren Barot, the Muslim convert who masterminded plans for mass murder on a horrendous scale, is one of the longest terms handed down for non-capital offences. It reflects not only the gravity of the appalling acts that this senior al-Qaeda operative was planning, his callous glee at the scale of death and injury and his cunning in elaborating plans to maim and terrify thousands of people in Britain and America; it is also a clear message to other fanatics abusing the name of Islam that a democracy will take whatever measures are needed to protect itself from such evil.
The threat posed by Barot is hard to envisage. The middle-class Hindu, who went to school in London and worked briefly as an airline ticket clerk, sought out the most radical and violent form of Islam after his conversion and spent the next nine years as a full-time terrorist planner. His expertise and professionalism in surveying the nine London hotels, three stations, synagogues, banks and Underground lines targeted for destruction is matched only by his sadism in contemplating how he could increase the panic and human suffering caused by exploding gas cylinders, napalm, nails and a radiation bomb.