'My client was no suicide bomber - he was a prat'
In his closing speech to the jury, David Spens QC, the defence counsel for Isa Ibrahim, said the 20-year-old got involved in making explosives to be controversial and to fill a big void in his life because he was lonely and the lost sheep of his family.
Winchester Crown Court has heard that Ibrahim was alleged to have carried out a reconnaissance of Broadmead shopping centre in Bristol in April 2008 and the prosecution claim he was an Islamic fanatic.
"Was he an Islamic extremist intent on carnage and mass murder in the heart of Bristol?" Mr Spens said. "Or was he a weak, lonely figure, living much of his life in a fantasy world, pretending to be somebody he is not. All style and no substance. Does that fit? All mouth and no trousers. Does that fit? Or put more simply – a prat? You decide.
"He said, 'my mother is going to kill me'. Is that the reaction of a jihadi bomber intercepted before they could carry out his divine bombing?" Mr Spens said.
"This is the reaction of a 19-year-old badly caught out playing with explosives and not a die hard extremist looking forward to his death – the idiot, for once in his life, knowing what a fool he had been," the barrister explained.
Ibrahim from Comb Paddock, Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, denies making an explosive with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the UK in April 2008.
He also denies a charge of preparing terrorist acts by purchasing material to make an explosive, making that explosive, buying material to detonate the explosive, carrying out "reconnaissance" before the act and "making an improvised suicide vest in which to then detonate an explosive substance".
The jury has been told he has admitted a third charge of making an explosive substance.
The trial continues.
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