LONDON: A London taxi driver, convicted of making bombs which were used against US forces in Iraq, was jailed for life on Friday and told he would spend at least 38 years behind bars. One of the bombs had killed a US sergeant.

On Thursday, Anis Sardar, 38, of London, was convicted at London’s Woolwich Crown Court of murder and conspiracy to murder after his fingerprints were found on adhesive tape used to make two bombs planted under roads leading out of Baghdad in an area close to a camp of the US Army.

One of the devices exploded as a US armoured vehicle drove over it on Sept 27, 2007, killing Sergeant First Class Randy Johnson, who was married and had two young children.

Sardar had argued that he had become involved in the conflict in Iraq to protect Sunni villages from attack by Shia militias during the US “surge” operation in 2007, and had merely helped others put the bombs together.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2015

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