A British-Iraqi doctor has been convicted of planning to commit "wholesale" murder by carrying out car bomb attacks in London and Scotland last year.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, who was born in Britain but raised mainly in Iraq, was found guilty by a British court on Tuesday of conspiracy to murder and two charges of conspiracy to cause explosions following an attack at Glasgow's Prestwick airport and a failed bombing attempt outside a London nightclub.

His co-defendant, Jordanian neurologist Mohammed Asha, 28, was acquitted of the same charges at Woolwich crown court.

Abdulla and Kafeel Ahmed, a 28-year-old Indian who died of burns after crashing a jeep packed with explosives into Glasgow airport, had wanted to punish British people for their country's perceived persecution of Palestinian Muslims and those in Afghanistan and Iraq, the court heard.

Jonathan Laidlaw, the prosecutor, said the men wanted to commit murder on an "indiscriminate and wholesale scale".

Their plans only failed because of "a mixture of good fortune and technical mistakes which meant the devices did not explode," he said.

Abdulla will be sentenced at a later stage.

Nightclub bomb plot

Two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters, fuel containers and nails were left in London's West End area in June, 2007.

One was parked outside Tiger Tiger, a nightclub near Piccadilly Circus which had more than 550 revellers inside, while the second was left at a nearby night-bus stop.

Mohammed Asha, a doctor, was cleared of the same charges [EPA]

The second car was deliberately placed to catch people fleeing the first explosion, had it gone off, prosecutors and police believe.

Neither vehicle exploded despite repeated attempts to set off detonators using mobile phones.

Abdulla and Ahmed escaped the scene in rickshaws and drove to Scotland the next day.

They later smashed a Jeep Cherokee, also packed with fuel containers and gas canisters, into the international terminal at Glasgow Prestwick airport.

The blazing car was rammed into the airport terminal doors but attempts to detonate petrol bombs on the vehicle failed.

'Stunt attacks'

Abdulla had denied plotting to kill anyone and told the court he "loved England" and believed they were going to Glasgow to flee the country.

The junior doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, west of Glasgow, said the attacks were a "stunt" to bring attention to Britain's role in Iraq.

He said he hated the United States' government and supported insurgents fighting in his homeland.

Prosecutors said the pair's aim had been to cause fear on a scale similar to that generated by the London bombings in July 7, 2005, which killed 52 people.