[11] It also took place three days after the appointment of Scottish MP Gordon Brown as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but Downing Street dismissed suggestions of a connection.

[12] A dark green Jeep Cherokee, registration number L808 RDT,[13] travelling at a speed estimated by a witness as about 30 mph[14] (48 km/h), struck security bollards in a terror ramming attack at the main entrance to Glasgow Airport.

[19][20][21] The man was arrested and later identified as Bilal Abdullah, a UK-born doctor of Iraqi descent who was working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Another man exited the car and ran into the terminal building while he was on fire and began writhing on the ground, before being confronted by an airport employee, John Smeaton,[22] who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his heroism.

[25] Royal Alexandra Hospital's accident and emergency department was evacuated and then closed when a suspected explosive device on the bomber's body was found.

[29] He was later transferred to Paddington Green Police Station in London, along with two unnamed suspects, after the Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini gave her consent to a combined prosecution in England under English law.

[31] BAA indicated the airport main terminal re-opened for an incoming flight from Ibiza on 1 July 2007 at 07:37, and began handling departures from approximately 09:00.

[32] Automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) technology identified the vehicle of two suspects connected with the Glasgow Airport attack on the M6 motorway, between junctions 18 and 17, near Holmes Chapel, Cheshire.

[37][38] This information may have originated from an interview of former CIA counter-terrorism officer Larry Johnson, conducted by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC on 29 June.

The network reported that one of the three men could be an associate of Dhiren Barot, an Indian convert to Islam who was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for plotting to fill limousines with explosives similar to those found in these incidents and park them in garages beneath hotels and office complexes.

Scotland Yard denied claims from a report by ABC News that police had a "crystal clear" picture of one suspect from CCTV footage.

[50] The other, Mohamed Haneef, 27, graduated from the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in India in 2002 and entered Australia due to the shortage of doctors in regional hospitals.

[51] He was working as a registrar at a Gold Coast hospital and was detained at Brisbane Airport while trying to board a one-way flight to India via Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

[50][52][53] His family claimed that Haneef's link to the alleged attackers was tenuous, he was not involved in the plot, and that he was returning to India to see his wife and 10-day-old daughter.

[54] Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed were identified as the main suspects behind the Glasgow attack and the car bombs discovered in London the previous day.

On 17 December 2009, Abdullah was convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to murder for the incidents in both London and Glasgow, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a requirement that he spend at least 32 years in jail.

[58] Investigations were being carried out to unearth Abdullah and Ahmed's possible involvement with the deadly 2005 Indian Institute of Science shooting, an attack by unknown suspects still at large.

[60] Alex McIlveen, a taxi driver, saw what was unfolding and after approaching one of the men, famously kicked the terrorist so hard in the groin that he tore a tendon in his own foot.

Unlike some of the other good Samaritans Mr. Clarkson kept his identity hidden for 10 weeks following the attack, having been mourning the recent loss of his partner to cancer, and even went back to work the next day.

In July 2010, it was announced that seven others (Kerr, McIlveen, Clarkson, Lambie, Ferguson, MacDonald, and one of the arresting police officers, Torquil Campbell) would be awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for their parts in combating the threat.

[70] Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, along with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill and the Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini participated in the COBRA meeting chaired by Gordon Brown.

He chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government's emergency committee, on the evening of the Glasgow incident to deal with both it and the two London car bombs of the day before.

[citation needed] Security measures were also increased at the T in the Park music festival in Balado, Kinross, which took place the weekend after the attack on Glasgow Airport.

[77] Mohammad Sarwar, MP for the nearby constituency of Glasgow Central, reported that threats had been made against the Muslim community in Scotland following the incident.

[78] On 24 October 2008 an interview with Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the Minister of War for the so-called Islamic State of Iraq was released by the Al-Furqan Institute for Media Production.

[80] There is support for this claim as just before the two men set off from Loch Lomond to Glasgow airport Kafeel Ahmed sent a text message to his brother Sabeel in Liverpool telling him to go to an email account.

Secondly Bilal Abdulla (the other bomber) addressed his will to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, "Minister of War", who were the leader and deputy leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq[81] There were reports that al-Muhajir personally recruited people for the plot between 2004 and 2005[82] Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle's airports all took measures to prevent similar action by blocking off roads approaching and in front of the terminal buildings, with the terminals and blockades policed by local police forces.

On the evening of 30 June, Liverpool John Lennon Airport was closed for eight hours while a vehicle was removed and taken away for forensic testing, reopening at about 04:40 on Sunday morning.

[86] On 1 July, the American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was evacuated due to a suspicious package left on the kerb.

[88][89] The baggage handler John Smeaton became a minor celebrity following his actions in curbing the attack and the news interviews he gave, and was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal.