A hospital patient who managed to talk a man out of detonating a bomb in a maternity wing said the would-be attacker “asked for a cuddle” before standing down.
Nathan Newby, who stopped an atrocity through an act of kindness, spoke publicly for the first time about his encounter with Mohammad Farooq before receiving the George Medal for bravery.
Farooq, a clinical support worker who took a viable pressure cooker bomb into St James’s hospital in Leeds intending to “kill as many nurses as possible” was jailed for at least 37 years last year. After asking for a cuddle, Farooq told Newby to “phone the police before I change my mind”.
The judge who sentenced Farooq, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, said Newby’s “decency and kindness on 20 January 2023 prevented an atrocity in a maternity wing of a major British hospital”.
His evidence had been “among the most remarkable this court has ever heard”, she added.
On Wednesday, Newby will receive the George Medal – the second-highest civilian gallantry award – for his life-saving actions.
Newby, 35, from Leeds, said he thought Farooq was “probably a nice guy” who was “going through bad things at the time”, and saw himself as someone who was “just in the right place at the right time”.
During his trial, Farooq was called “a self-radicalised lone wolf terrorist”, inspired by the so-called Islamic State group, but also chose the hospital as a target as he had been a clinical support worker there and had a long-running grievance with nurses on his ward.
Newby, who was a patient at the hospital on the night Farooq planned to carry out the bombing, said he had gone outside for a vape and “a bit of fresh air” when he saw Farooq with his hands in his pockets, “swaying like he’d had some bad news or something”.
“I just went over to see if he was alright, to see if I could make him feel better,” Newby said. “I said: ‘How are you, pal? Are you alright?’ and it just went from there really.”
He said Farooq eventually told him he was there “for some sort of revenge”, and revealed he had a bomb about an hour into the conversation.
Newby said: “I could hear it in his voice, it wasn’t a joke … So I asked to have a look at it, just to confirm it, and then he just happily opened it up and showed me it.”
Newby said part of him was scared but his main concern was to try to move Farooq away from the building.
He said he was going through his own struggles with mental health at the time and thought: “If it goes off, it’s just going to be me and him, and I want to make sure it’s just me and him and not no one else.”
He asked Farooq about the radius and moved him away to some nearby benches, working out that “if it had have gone off at least, it would have just took the doors, it wouldn’t take the whole building out”.
Newby said the plan was “just pure instinct”, and, over the next several hours, the pair “just chatted”, with Farooq telling him about his family and children.
“He asked for a cuddle a few times, and I said yeah, of course you can.”
He said Farooq seemed “normal”, adding: “I don’t judge anybody. Everybody’s different and unique in their own ways aren’t they? I didn’t judge him.”
Asked how he felt about him now, Newby said: “He probably is a nice guy. It was just his head was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”