Richard Reid

This article is about the British terrorist Richard Reid. For the Canadian politician, see Richard Gavin Reid .

Richard Colvin Reid (born August 12, 1973 in Bromley , London ) is a British Islamist terrorist. He became known in the media as a shoe bomber .

Reid's shoe bomb

Reid attended the Thomas Tallis School in Kidbrooke, London. The son of an Englishwoman and a Jamaican became suspicious of street crime at an early age and converted to Islam at the Feltham Young Offenders juvenile detention center . He was believed to have had contacts with al-Qaeda and, according to the FBI, he used the false identities of Tariy Raja and Abdel Rahim, among others.

On December 21, 2001, Reid entered Charles de Gaulle Airport to board an American Airlines scheduled flight to Miami. He aroused the suspicion of the security guards because of his unkempt appearance, the fact that he paid for his ticket in cash, without a return flight and without luggage. When asked, he made himself conspicuous and they called the police. There followed two hours of interrogation, but the suspicion against him could not be substantiated, he was released and received a replacement ticket. On December 22, 2001 , he attempted an assassination attempt on a passenger plane ( American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami ) with explosives hidden in his shoes . Reid's seat was chosen so that a wing and the associated fuel lines would have been affected. During the flight and shortly after a meal was served, some passengers complained about the smell of smoke. Shortly after, Reid was seen trying to light a match. He was warned that smoking was not permitted during the flight. Reid apologized and put the matches aside for now. Only a few minutes later, however, Reid was seen by a flight attendant as he sat leaning forward in his seat, apparently trying to light a fuse sticking out of one of his shoes with a match. The ignition was thwarted as the flight attendant immediately tried to get hold of the shoe. But she was pushed to the ground. She called for help, whereupon a second flight attendant tried to prevent him from doing his job. He attacked her and bit her thumb. The 1.93 m tall Reid was finally overwhelmed by other passengers, who were able to secure it with plastic handcuffs , belt extensions and headphone cables. Two doctors on board administered a sedative to Reid, which they found in the aircraft's emergency kit . After the situation had been brought under control, the flight was to Logan International Airport from Boston diverted. For a long time there was a residual uncertainty because it was not clear whether there was a second explosive charge in the cargo baggage.

The authorities later discovered 283 grams of plastic explosives hidden in the shoe lining using an acetone peroxide detonator ( TATP ). In the event of a detonation, the amount would have been enough to cause a hole in the aircraft hull and allegedly cause the aircraft to crash. In the course of the following investigations it turned out that the fuse was clearly too wet to detonate the explosive device, as Reid had been in rainy weather for a long time before departure.

On January 30, 2003, Reid was convicted of attempted murder and terrorism in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts. During the trial, he openly admitted that he was a fundamentalist terrorist and a declared enemy of the United States, and that he was acting on behalf of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden .

He was sentenced to three life imprisonment, another four times thirty and four times twenty years, and then five years probation. Since the sentences must be served sequentially, the suspended sentence and the additional fines of eight times US $ 250,000 and additional fines of US $ 300, US $ 800 and US $ 5,784 are no longer significant. He is serving his sentence in ADX Florence Federal Prison, a prison in Florence, Colorado.

In 2009, Reid went on a hunger strike in prison so consistently that he ended up being force-fed. In 2011 Reid started another hunger strike because he felt that he was treated inhumanely.

Web links

• Danny Kringiel: Al- Qaida terrorist Richard Reid. The man who took off our shoes. In: one day on Spiegel Online from January 30, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Article in Time Magazine
2. ↑ Danny Kringiel: Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid: The man who took off our shoes. In: Spiegel Online . January 30, 2013, accessed June 9, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Shoe bomb suspect 'did not act alone'. BBC News, January 25, 2002, accessed December 21, 2018 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Lee Moran: Shoe bomber in Supermax: Richard Reid pictured for first time inside high security prison. Dailymail.co.uk, October 10, 2011, accessed December 21, 2018 . 
5. ^ Shoe Bomb Suspect Had Enough Explosives to Bring Down Plane. abcnews, December 24, 2014, accessed December 21, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Pam Belluck: THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE BOMB PLOT; Unrepentant Shoe Bomber Is Given a Life Sentence For Trying to Blow Up Jet. The New York Times, January 31, 2003, accessed December 21, 2018 .