Historica Wiki
Advertisement
Faisal Akhtar

Faisal Akhtar (1980-2010) was a British jihadist terrorist who was affiliated with an al-Qaeda cell in Sheffield, Yorkshire during the 2000s. He died in an accidental explosion while training for a suicide bombing plot targeting London.

Biography[]

Faisal Akhtar was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England in 1980 to a family of Pakistani immigrants; his father suffered from dementia, and he was raised in a religiously conservative family. Akhtar befriended the Salafists Omar Ahmed, Waj Ahmed, and Azzam al-Britani and became the fourth member of their jihadist cell, although he refused to appear in martyrdom videos because he believed that appearing on camera was haram (forbidden in Islam). Akhtar was known for his creative ideas on how to carry out terrorist attacks against nonbelievers, such as attempting to use his pet crows to carry explosives. In 2010, the group planned to carry out suicide bombings in London, but their plot was nearly discovered after their English neighbor Alice danced with the group's fifth member, Hassan Malik, at the group's apartment, where they had stored their explosives. The terrorists were forced to relocate their bombs to another hiding spot, carrying them in grocery bags.

Faisal Akhtar death

Akhtar's death

The terrorists brought the bags with them as they travelled to the new hideout on foot, only for Akhtar to trip while running across a field and accidentally detonate his explosives, killing himself and a sheep in the process. His death worried Omar, who believed that Faisal had been cheated of martyrdom, but Azzam justified Akhtar's martyrdom by saying that he had attacked Britain's food supply by killing a sheep. The discovery of his severed head in a nearby tree led to the police becoming aware of the terror plot, forcing the group to hastily attack the London Marathon, a plot which ultimately failed, as all of the would-be Marathon bombers detonated their explosives at different locations after being caught by police.

Advertisement