British terrorist has been sentenced to 37 years in prison for attempting to blow up a hospital in Leeds

21 March 2025 , 17:58

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British terrorist has been sentenced to 37 years in prison for attempting to blow up a hospital in Leeds

A ‘self-radicalised lone wolf terrorist’ who almost detonated a homemade pressure cooker bomb in the maternity wing of a hospital has been jailed for a minimum of 37 years.

Mohammad Farooq took the explosive, which was modelled on those detonated at the 2013 Boston Marathon but with twice the amount of explosives, into St James’s Hospital in Leeds in January 2023 – but ‘lost his bottle’ after talking to patient Nathan Newby.

Prosecutors said the clinical support worker had planned to ‘kill as many nurses as possible’.

Sheffield Crown Court heard how Farooq, now 29, targeted the hospital after first travelling to the American base at RAF Menwith Hill, in North Yorkshire, but failing to get in due to the high security.

Mrs Cheema-Grubb jailed him for life on Friday, ordering him to serve at least 37 years before he is considered for release.

Farooq walked into the maternity ward in January 2023 (Picture: PA)

Patient Newby managed to talk Farooq out of the attack, with the judge praising him: ‘He’s an extraordinary, ordinary man whose decency and kindness on January 20, 2023, prevented an atrocity in a maternity wing of a major British hospital.’

Farooq was accused of seeking ‘his own martyrdom’ with a ‘murderous terrorist attack’, detonating the bomb before killing as many people as possible with knives, prosecutors said.

Farooq, having immersed himself in ‘extremist Islamic ideology’, then planned to use an imitation firearm to incite police to shoot him dead, a jury heard.

He went to the hospital with a plan to detonate the device in a hospital café during a shift change, ‘killing as many nurses as possible’, the prosecutor said.

But Nathan Newby, a patient smoking a cigarette outside the hospital ‘noticed the defendant’ and stopped him in his tracks, Mr Sandiford said.

The sentencing judge said Mr Newby is a ‘modest and gentle man’ whose evidence was among the most remarkable this court has ever heard.

‘That simple act of kindness almost certainly saved many lives that night because, as the defendant was later to tell the police officers who arrested him, Mr Newby succeeded in ‘talking him down’,’ the court heard.

Emma Davis

Deputy Editor