Chilling Martyrdom Video Shown in U.K. Court

On raw video, Umar Islam says, Allah "loves us to die and kill in his path."

ByABC News
April 10, 2008, 9:53 AM

April 10, 2008— -- Allah "loves us to die and kill in his path" says a man who is accused of plotting to blow up passenger jets as part of an al Qaeda plot.

The martyrdom video was shown to jurors in the United Kingdom today in the conspiracy trial of eight alleged plotters who hoped to use liquid explosives to blow up airplanes in the summer of 2006.

The 19-minute video features 29-year-old Umar Islam speaking in English with a British accent as he praises Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. A shorter four-minute version was released to the public by British authorities, while jurors watched the full-length video.

Islam said no British citizen would be safe so long as the country is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Most of you are too busy, you know, watching "Home and Away" and "Eastenders," complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to even care about anything," Islam says. [Watch video.]

The video was played on about a dozen large monitors throughout the courtoom. A BBC News reporter who was in the court when the video was played said the jurors and others in court appeared transfixed by the videos.

At one point, Islam is asked by someone off-camera if he is brainwashed. His answer, yes: "I would. Yes, my brain has been washed, and it has been washed by the clean and cleansing water of Islam," he says.

Meanwhile, the suspected ringleader of the plot won't face criminal charges for the alleged conspiracy, British authorities revealed last year. Rashid Rauf may be tried for an unrelated murder charge. Rauf, a British-Pakistani, denies any connection to terrorism, though he was named in British press reports and by U.K. intelligence sources as one of the key figures behind a plot to smuggle liquid explosives on board airliners.

It was Rauf's arrest in Pakistan in August 2006 that led police in Great Britain to call off a surveillance operation and to swoop in on an alleged al Qaeda cell whose members were said to be well-advanced with preparations for the potentially deadly operation which could have killed hundreds if successful.