Failed ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid describes ‘tactical regrets’ that mass murder mission failed

Richard Reid, the failed British “shoe bomber”, has said that he has “tactical regrets” that he did not manage to commit mass murder by blowing up a transatlantic airliner.

In a letter written from his maximum security jail cell in Colorado, Reid showed no remorse for his attempt to kill 197 passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001. He argued that his actions were “permissible under Islamic law”, 

Reid, 41, said that he failed in his mission because “it was not time” for him and the passengers to die and as God had “other plans” for him. 

Asked if he had any regrets, Reid seemed to imply that he had wished that he planned the attack better, although he said that he could not elaborate in a letter from the jail where he spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. “I do have some tactical regrets of a sort which I won’t go into here, but I don’t regret losing my freedom,” he wrote.

Reid, who converted to Islam in prison in Britain, trained for his mission with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

In another letter, he said that he did not view as a “tragedy” the terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. “I do not see what happened at Charlie Hebdo as a tragedy,” he wrote. “Rather the tragedy is that people think it is OK to demean the sacred and belittle that which is more beloved to we Muslims than their own souls. As the saying goes, if you play with fire you might get burned, so I have no tears for those who insult Islam.”