St James’ Hospital: ‘Incredibly brave’ Leeds patient whose ‘act of kindness’ stopped pressure cooker bomber

Detective Superintendent Paul Greenwood said Mohammad Farooq was an “incredibly dangerous individual” who would probably have caused “large scale loss of life” at St James’s Hospital in Leeds if Nathan Newby had not intervened in an “act of kindness” that turned into an “act of bravery”.

Sheffield Crown Court heard how Mr Newby stepped in after support worker Farooq took a pressure cooker device with 10kg of explosives into the hospital, where he worked, in January, last year.

Mr Greenwood, head of investigations at Counter Terrorism Policing North East, confirmed the device was modelled on the ones detonated at the 2013 Boston Marathon in the US, but with twice the amount of explosives.

He said Mr Newby went to talk to Farooq as he thought he might be anxious because he had received some bad news about a medical matter.

Mr Greenwood said Mr Newby built up such a rapport that Farooq told him his intention to explode the bomb.

“Nathan, in that act of kindness, turned from an act of kindness into an act of bravery,” said the detective.

Mr Newby moved the defendant outside as he thought any explosion would have a more limited effect in the open air and, over a period of more than hour, he persuaded Farooq to abandon his plan and hand himself into the police, even persuading him to allow him to use his phone to call in officers.

Mr Greenwood said: “With a lot of humility, Nathan says that he was just in the right place at the right time, and he did nothing special.

“I think he was the right person in the right place at the right time because almost anybody else, when they realised they were exposed to such risk, would have walked if not run away, quite rightly.

“But Nathan, very bravely, continued to expose himself to a sustained threat.

“Even when, during the 999 call, Farooq produced what appeared to be a genuine 9mm handgun, which was actually a blank firing gun that Farooq had adapted to look genuine, he continued in the call and continued to engage and de-escalate Farooq, persuading him to put the gun down and awaited the arrival of the armed officers.”

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Mr Greenwood said: “He very much plays down the intervention that he had, but I think it was incredibly brave.”

The detective said the bomb was viable and he believes Farooq would have carried out his plan if Mr Newby had not intervened.

He said: “Nathan actually asked him what his intentions were if he hadn’t spoken to him that morning, and Farooq unequivocally said it was his intention to let it off inside.”

Mr Greenwood said: “He (Farooq) had downloaded some instructions and followed those instructions to make a viable pressure cooker bomb that’s been forensically examined and confirmed that, had he initiated the bomb, it would have detonated.

“By Farooq’s own admission in interview, as a benchmark, he’d looked at the Boston Marathon bomb and looked at how much explosives those individuals had used.

“And he doubled the amount of explosives, so he’d used almost 10kg of explosive within his bomb. So, had that detonated inside the hospital, which is what I believe was his intention to do, it would have caused utter devastation.”

Mr Greenwood said Farooq was self-radicalised and it appears he had developed a hatred that built on his hostility to his hospital employers after a series of issues at work.

He said: “The investigation tells us fairly confidently that Farooq acted alone and self-radicalised through the consumption of extremist propaganda on the internet.”

He said: “I think he just got deeper and deeper into that. It compounded his already dangerous mindset with the deep-rooted hatred he had of his employer.”

Mr Greenwood said: “He clearly, through the resentment towards his employer, through the pro-Isis ideology that he had consumed online, had got himself to a position where he was determined to conduct an attack, regardless of its impact, with the intent of causing significant devastation – probably or potentially large-scale loss of life, but certainly large-scale injury.

“So I think at the time, the mindset he was in and the position he got himself into through that radicalisation made him an incredibly dangerous individual.”