"Taxi 'used for airport attack dry run'"

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Taxi 'used for airport attack dry run'
By David Lister
United Kingdom - The Times of London

 
A taxi driver told yesterday how he took one of the two men who carried out
the Jeep attack on Glasgow airport on the same route just days earlier in
what may have been a "dry run". 

Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi-born doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, called
a taxi to take him to the airport at 7pm on Wednesday June 13 - two and a
half weeks before the attack. 

It was not clear whether he went to the airport to catch a flight or to
carry out reconnaissance for a possible attack. Denis O'Donnell, manager at
the Paisley Cab Company, said: "He [Abdulla] used us about 18 or 19 times in
a five-week period from May 22. He went from the [Paisley] hospital to the
house in Neuk Crescent, Houston, and once to the airport." 

One taxi driver told The Times that the doctor always insisted on sitting in
the front of the car. The driver said that he was always pretty quiet. 

"He had a bit of an accent, though his English was pretty good. I just asked
him what kind of a day he was expecting and he told me that he was expecting
it to be pretty busy on the wards. I picked him up at about 9.30am. There
was nothing unusual about him at all, though looking back it was maybe a bit
late in the day for a doctor to be starting. His shirt needed ironing. I
remember the curtains being drawn in the house. I dropped him at the front
entrance to the hospital and that was that." 

Mr O'Donnell said that police had called at the taxi company at 2.50pm on
Saturday, just 25 minutes before the Jeep crashed into Glasgow airport. "The
officers just wanted to know how many times Abdulla had taken our taxis."

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