The court heard he had agreed to be a suicide bomber with the intention of destroying a passenger aircraft while it was in the air en route from Europe to the United States.

And his guilty plea has been hailed as a victory by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch.

But according to State Prosecutor Richard Horwell, "... he did not take that flight. We accept by then he had withdrawn from the conspiracy which by then he had been party to for an appreciable period of time"

Now nobody would claim this was a totally cool guy, but let's face it, he didn't actually do anything illegal, he thought about it a bit, and then decided against it.

So the person that they have actually managed to convict, because for once they have some evidence ("three years of intensive and painstaking international investigation", according to the head of the Anti-Terrorist branch), hasn't done anything at all.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are locked up, tortured and killed in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanemo, and around the world by the US, the UK and their axis-of-evil allies. Since they are unable to bring any of these "terrorists" to justice, we must assume, despite the way they are treated, that they are even less guilty than Saajid Badat, convicted today under English law of not being a suicide bomber.