Briton Guilty Of Making IEDs To Kill US Troops

A British bomb-maker has been found guilty of building improvised explosive devices to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Anis Abid Sadar, 38, is facing a lengthy prison sentence for his part in the bloody Iraqi insurgency, in what is believed to be a legal first.

Sardar, from Wembley in northwest London, made the bombs as part of a "deadly" campaign to kill Americans fighting in the country.

The devices were planted in or around the road west out of Baghdad in 2007, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

One killed 24-year-old Sergeant First Class Randy Johnson, of 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment when it hit the armoured vehicle he was travelling in on 27 September 2007.

Sardar, a black cab driver, was caught some seven years later when officials at the FBI's Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Centre (TEDAC) found his fingerprints on some of the bombs.

A jury of seven women and five men took 11 hours and 16 minutes to convict him of murder and conspiracy to murder.

He was found guilty by a majority of 11-1 on the murder charge and unanimously on the conspiracy to murder count.

A count of conspiracy to cause an explosion was ordered to lie on file.

Sardar, who will be sentenced on Friday morning, remained calm as the verdicts were read out.

Sue Hemming, head of Special Crime and Counter Terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "Anis Sardar is a highly dangerous man who created bombs so large that not only did they tragically kill Sgt Randy Johnson, but they put other lives in danger and caused significant damage to heavily armoured US military vehicles.

"Although Anis Sardar's fingerprints were found only on two of the bombs, it is beyond doubt that he was part of a joint enterprise to make four such devices, and potentially many others, given their similarity and location.

"He knew precisely what he was doing and was working with murderous intent against coalition forces."

Sardar had originally denied being "directly or indirectly" involved in making bombs.

But on the second day of his trial Sardar admitted that fingerprints found on two out of four devices linked to the case were his.

Sardar, who denied all the charges, told the jury he had become involved in the insurgency to protect his fellow Sunni Muslims from Shia militias.

He claimed the target was not American soldiers, and blamed instead "the likes of Dick Cheney, George Bush and Tony Blair" for their deaths.

The bomb that killed Sgt Johnson did not have Sardar's fingerprints, but all four devices had prints from his co-conspirator, Sajjad Adnan, who is not a British citizen.

Prosecutors said the pair had worked together and with others to build and plant the bombs.

Adnan was arrested after the bombings and handed over to Iraqi authorities. His whereabouts are not known.

The court heard that Sgt Johnson told his comrades "Don't let me die here" after he was fatally injured near the road between the Iraqi capital and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Mark Aggers, a gunner on the Stryker vehicle, was left with serious shrapnel wounds, while another three servicemen suffered concussions.

Two of the other bombs linked to Sardar were recovered intact, while one was safely detonated by a bomb disposal team.

Two soldiers from 2nd Battalion 5th Cavalry Regiment were seriously injured by sniper fire as they guarded one of the devices in March 2007.

Sardar was stopped at Heathrow on his way back to the UK from Syria and had his fingerprints taken two months after Sgt Johnson was killed.

Five years later, officers searching his home as part of a separate investigation found an Arab language bombmaking manual with references to Islam on a computer disc.