Standing by the burnt wreckage of his Jeep amid the mayhem he had wreaked at Glasgow airport, Kafeel Ahmed lifted a can of petrol above his head and poured it over himself.

A month later, the Indian engineer died after suffering excruciating agony while being cared for in hospital.

The 28-year-old man was the only casualty of a conspiracy intended to leave hundreds of innocent people dead.

Information gleaned from his will, records of online chats, e-mail, CCTV footage and forensic material from the bomb factory proved he was a central figure in the plot.

As a former president of the Islamic society while at university in Belfast, Ahmed was deeply involved in political Islam.

He also shared a home with members of the fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahir while living in Cambridge.

Police in India also claimed he and his brother Sabeel had links to the missionary sect Tablighi Jamaat.

It was Ahmed who drove one of the two Mercedes car bombs to London, purchased equipment and constructed the crucial mobile phone detonators.

The most damning material was found in his will in which he told his brother Sabeel how he had an opportunity of “hitting at the devil’s place”.

In it he wrote the “call of jihad” had been “loud and open” and he apologised to his mother for lying to her about his “project”.

Ahmed was born into a large, wealthy medical family in Bangalore, India.

He studied mechanical engineering at university before attending Queen’s College in Belfast to read a masters in aeronautical engineering between 2001 and 2003.

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