Iraqi doctor jailed for 32 years for plotting UK bombings

London: Iraqi doctor was imprisoned for 32 years on Wednesday for plotting to commit "wholesale" murder by carrying out bomb attacks outside a nightclub in central London and at a packed Scottish airport last year.

Bilal Abdullah, 29, was convicted on Tuesday of being part of a small Islamist cell that had planned a series of spectacular bombings but turned to a dramatic suicide ram-raid attack on Glasgow Airport when their initial plans failed.

Abdullah, along with accomplice Kafeel Ahmad, had wanted to punish the British people for their country's perceived persecution of Palestinian Muslims and those in Afghanistan and Iraq, prosecutors said.

Justice Colin Mackay gave Abdullah a life sentence on Wednesday, ordering him to serve a minimum of 32 years concurrently on each count and telling him he was a "religious extremist and a bigot."

His co-accused Jordanian doctor Mohammad Asha, 28, who was accused of providing guidance and funding for the attacks, was cleared of the same charges.

In the London attacks, the men tried to detonate two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters, fuel containers and nails which were left by a nightclub and a bus stop in the West End area of the capital in the early hours of June 29, 2007.

The next day, the bombers drove a Jeep Cherokee, also packed with fuel containers and gas canisters, at speed into the international terminal at Glasgow Airport on what was its busiest day of the year.