A PATIENT has described how he dissuaded an NHS worker and alleged terrorist from setting off a bomb in a hospital canteen.

Nathan Newby told police Mohammed Farooq was armed and had a bag containing a bomb with him as the two talked outside a hospital, a jury heard.

He said: “I talked to him for so many hours and he’s had a gun on him all the way through me talking to him.

“What if I had wrestled him to the ground and he had got agitated?

“At a lot of what-ifs.”

Farooq is accused of planning a terror attack on RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate and St James Hospital in Leeds. He denies the charge.

Firearms experts later established that the gun was a fake imitation firearm. The prosecution allege the bomb was viable and could have been detonated.

Read more: jury see and hear footage of Farooq talking to police at the hospital

In an interview which was played at Sheffield Crown Court, Mr Newby told police officers how he spotted the defendant as he was walking back into St James’s in the early hours of January 20.

He said: “He just looked upset, as though he’d had some really bad news.

“I’m quite good at judging people just by looking at them, I’m quite good at reading people’s body language.

“I just thought I’d go over and see if he’s all right.

“I thought, if he was down, I’d try and cheer him up.”

Mr Newby described how he began to chat with Farooq who told him he “just wanted to get them back” and pointed at the hospital.

He said the defendant described how he was either a student or had worked at the hospital for two years but now “he’s lost everything and just wanted to get them back for what they’d done.”

Mr Newby said Farooq told him: “They’ve stabbed me in the back. They’ve f***** me over.

He told the officers that the defendant was agitated and kept looking down at a bag.

Mr Newby asked Farooq what was in bag and “he said ‘it’s just a bomb’”.

He said Farooq told him he planning to walk into the hospital canteen.

“He was just going to set it off and walk out,” he said.

Mr Newby said: “I was quite shocked. I thought ‘wow’.

“I’m looking at what he said was a bomb.”

He said: “I just started talking to try and keep him calm.

“My priority was to get him away from the hospital.”

Mr Newby told the officers how he persuaded Farooq to move to a bench where he talked to him for a long time.

“I was talking to keep him calm,” he said.

“I didn’t want him flipping.”

The witness said he thought at one point about whether he would need to wrestle him to ground but “he seemed to be quite calm”.

Mr Newby said Farooq eventually said he wanted to hand himself in and passed him his phone to call 999.

It was during the emergency call that Farooq produced a handgun, which later turned out to be an imitation.

The witness said he refused to take the gun from him and asked him to put it on the bench.

The trial continues.