Bomber blamed Britain for Iraq suffering

Bilal Abdulla

Born in Aylesbury, Abdulla spent his first five years in Britain before moving to Baghdad with his family.

After completing his studies at Baghdad College he followed his father, Professor Talal Abdulla, into medicine. In 1999 he travelled to Britain to study medicine but could not afford the fees and left after a year in Cambridge. He even claimed to have tried to join the British Army in an attempt to stay.

He graduated in medicine from the University of Baghdad in 2004 as the country slid into anarchy and civil war after Saddam Hussain was ousted in 2003. Abdulla blamed the British and Americans and became obsessed with avenging the deaths of friends at the hands of Shia Muslims.

In 2004 he returned to Cambridge to continue his medical training. His mother's aunt and her children lived in the city.

Friends said he was not afraid to share his extreme views on religion and politics and was linked to the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Abdulla is said to have met Kafeel Ahmed at religious groups in Cambridge.

At the time of the attempted bombings he worked as a locum house officer at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, near Glasgow airport.

He is one of 1,985 doctors working in Britain who obtained their initial medical qualification in Iraq.

Kafeel Ahmed

The engineer in the terror cell, he modelled the car bombs on those used by insurgent forces in Iraq.

Born in Bangalore in India, his parents are both doctors. He first arrived in the UK as a student in 2001 and obtained a Masters degree in aeronautical engineering at Queen's University, Belfast, where he was president of the Islamic Society.

In May 2004 he began work on a PhD at the Faculty of Science and Technology at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, which he never completed.

Ahmed is believed to have become radicalised while mixing with members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Cambridge. He was also a member of the Tablighi Jamaat - a missionary Islamic group behind plans to build a "mega mosque" in east London.

Ahmed left Cambridge in 2005 for India, returning only briefly the following year to do further work on his PhD. In May 2007 he again returned to England telling his family: "I am involved in a large-scale, confidential project. It is about global warming."

He died on 2 August, five weeks after the Glasgow bombing.

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