London-born militant Muslim Richard Colvin Reid's 15 minutes of notorious celebrity came about in 2001 when he tried to blow an airliner out of the sky with a bomb concealed in his shoes.
Reid had boarded the flight in Paris and was bound for Miami. The 6'4" mule-faced would-be "martyr" was overpowered after a flight attendant saw him lighting a match to the toe of one of his shoes. Happily, the plastic explosives failed to detonate.
Details of Reid's past are still murky, but he had converted to Islam in the 1990s, lived in a variety of other countries and is thought to have trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly elsewhere. He also has a record in England of arrests for muggings.
In 2003, Reid pled guilty, was convicted of a terrorist act and was given a life sentence without chance for parole.
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