Bangladeshi-origin man guilty of plotting to blow up BA plane

Rajib Karim, an employee of British Airways was also convicted of plotting to financially ravage his employer by attacking its IT installations. A jury at Woolwich crown court in south-east London found Karim, a disciple of al-Awlaki, guilty of using his position as an IT expert with the British Airways to try to help stage attacks on the west.

He was also held responsible for three additional counts of preparing for terrorist attacks, including conspiracy with Awlaki who is on the run. Karim, who used the nickname "flyer" plotted to blow up an aircraft, shared information of use to Awlaki and offered to help financial or disruptive attacks on BA, jurors ruled.

According to The Times, Karim, who used the most complex computer encryption that UK anti-terrorist officers had ever encountered to communicate with his fellow jihadists, is facing decades in prison after his conviction on nine terrorism charges.

Karim, who has two children and lives in Newcastle, was at the centre of a web of Bangladeshi nationals, including family members, who were transferring money to terrorist organisations and arranging to travel for jihad around the world.

In coded messages with Al-Awlaki, Karim offered to undertake cabin crew training with BA - which was in the midst of an industrial dispute and looking for volunteers - and to destroy the company's two IT data centres which, according to a BA executive, would have threatened the company's survival.

He also offered to recruit security guards and baggage personnel at Heathrow to help put a bomb on a plane. Karim, who studied at the University of Manchester from 1998 to 2002, came to live in Britain with his wife, Zajarin Raja, a British national, in late 2006 amid fears that his son had cancer.

In mid-2007 he secured a place on BA's graduate training scheme and began working in the company's Newcastle offices as a software engineer. He was given indefinite leave to remain in 2009 and was applying for naturalisation when arrested in early 2010.

Jurors at Woolwich Crown court heard that Karim was living a double life: blending in with the local community by shaving his beard and playing football while communicating with fellow terrorists around the world.

He and his brother, Tehzeeb, were members of the proscribed organisation Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.

Counter-terrorism officers took nine months to decipher 300 e-mails between Karim and Tehzeeb. According to the report, the brothers discussed setting up a July 7-type group in Britain and also about travelling to Pakistan and Yemen for jihad.

Karim wrote that the more he mixed with British citizens the more convinced he was that they were "combatants", and hence legitimate targets. The coded messages between the brothers, as well as between Karim and al-Awlaki, mentioned a number of people who Karim thought could help in attacks on British targets.

Not all have been traced. The messages also outlined how they were transferring money across the globe to assist jihad. One said that Karim's mother-in-law, Nowwaja Choudhury, who lives in Newcastle, carried 3,000 pounds with her to Bangladesh.

Karim wrote to his brother that she had "been told that this is for charity, but she probably understood the real cause". Karim had already pleaded guilty to several terrorism-related charges.

He was found guilty yesterday of gaining a UK job to exploit terrorist purposes, sharing information of use to hate groups, offering to help financial or disruptive attacks on BA and plotting to blow up a plane. He will be sentenced on March 18.