Leeds Bradford Airport: forced to close along with other major UK airports due to Mukaty's bomb hoax

A failed asylum seeker shut down an airport and put three others on red alert with a series of hoax calls warning of suicide bomb attacks.

Salman Mukaty, 27, was trying to stop himself being deported to Pakistan after more than nine years in the UK.

He told police that 16 passengers carrying ’suicide bomb materials’ were about to board planes in airports across the country.

His false warnings forced Leeds-Bradford airport to close for one hour and put Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester on red alert.

Alan Blake, prosecuting said it was ‘hard to conceive a more dramatic, more horrific threat’ than the series of calls made on March 27.

Mukaty believed he would avoid deportation as it would ‘not be safe for him to return to Pakistan once he had helped the UK authorities’, he added.

Mukaty, of Slough, Berkshire, claimed he had been tipped off about the bombs by an extremist friend. But, said Mr Blake, his account was ‘riddled with lies and inconsistencies’.

‘The calls were made specifically to service his own interests. He is a dangerous and selfish man,’ he told Reading Crown Court.

‘What better way for Mr Mukaty to show that it would be unjust for him to be returned to Pakistan than to show how useful he was to the authorities?’

Mukaty, born in Karachi, had been appealing against his asylum refusal and met immigration officials on the day of the hoax calls.

He claimed to have genuinely believed the information given to him by someone he called Arif Khan, who he said had links with Islamic extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mukaty said he had known Khan since he was four but his friend has never been tracked down. Mr Blake dismissed Khan as a myth.

Police photograph of Mukaty

Harold Persaud, defending, said that Mukaty genuinely feared that ‘innocent people would die’ after he was tipped off.

‘The person who is given that information would very rarely be in a position to judge whether that information is credible,’ he told the court.

‘He still believes what he did was right giving what he knew.’

It took the jury less than two hours to convict Mukaty of four counts of communicating false information with intent at the airports.

He will be sentenced on November 6. The offence carries a maximum term of seven years.

The early-morning bomb scare caused misery for hundreds of passengers at Leeds-Bradford airport. There was traffic chaos as roads were closed and fire engines raced to the scene.

Once the airport reopened, it took another two hours for services to return to normal. Around 2.87million passengers use Leeds-Bradford every year.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said an independent immigration judge was due to rule on Mukaty’s asylum appeal.

Detective Chief Superintendant George Turner, head of the South East Counter Terrorism Unit, said: ‘This case sends a clear message that this sort of offence will be thoroughly investigated and dealt with robustly.’

Perhaps his credulous lawyer could explain why Mukaty was unable to prove the existence of the imaginary jihadi friend whom he claimed had tipped him off?

Once having made this Taqiyya deception, Muktar then redoubled the lie and used it to try and prevent his deportation.

This was a despicable crime – and one which shows that this so-called asylum seeker had no respect or consideration for the country he hoped would take him in. Although thankfully no-one was killed, this was still in our view an act of terrorism.

Mukaty knows all to well that if he is eventually imprisoned here he will be able to lodge an appeal that could see the hopelessly gullible immigration authorities allowing him to stay on.

If found guilty he should be deported immediately – and good riddance; and if found not guilty he should be deported anyway. Any sensible country would have done this long ago, instead of giving him another opportunity to try his luck at the world’s favourite immigration casino, courtesy of the dhimmi British legal system.

[Main story: Daily Mail]

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