A terror suspect being treated for severe burns after the Glasgow Airport attack has died in hospital, police said last night.

Kafeel Ahmed, 27, was being treated in a specialist burns unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary following the attack on Saturday June 30. It is understood he had been under armed guard.

A spokesman for Strathclyde Police said: "We can confirm that the man seriously injured during the course of the incident at Glasgow Airport on Saturday June 30 has died in Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

"The man died earlier this evening and the circumstances surrounding the death have been reported to the procurator- fiscal."

Ahmed was one of two men held at the airport after a Jeep was rammed repeatedly into the main terminal building and burst into flames.

The would-be suicide bomber was wrestled to the ground by police and members of the public after setting himself on fire, having jumped from the vehicle. The incident happened a day after police found two unexploded car bombs in central London.

Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah, who was believed to be a passenger in the vehicle at Glasgow Airport, was charged on July 6 with conspiring to cause explosions.

Ahmed, from Bangalore, India, had suffered third-degree burns to 90% of his body when arrested. He was initially treated at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, but was transferred to Glasgow Royal Infirmary within a few days of the attack.

The severity of his injuries led some medical experts to predict he would not survive. Some said he might not even live a week after the incident.

In the days after the attack, one of the medical team who treated him said his condition was "beyond repair".

Speaking anonymously to a news organisation, he said: "The prognosis is not good and he is not likely to survive. He has third-degree burns over most of his torso and limbs. It is beyond repair and because he has lost so much skin, he is now vulnerable to infection and won't be able to fight it."

One report later quoted senior police sources as saying that Ahmed was being kept alive on the orders of MI5.

They claimed the security services wanted him alive to avoid a backlash from radical Muslims.

It is understood he was on a life-support machine in hospital. Police and medical sources claimed the decision to keep him alive was more to do with politics than clinical judgment.

One medical source estimated the combined cost of round-the-clock security and medical treatment for Ahmed since the attack had reached £150,000.

He had been in a coma since the incident. Most burns experts believed he was effectively dead. Last week it emerged that special shark-skin implants costing £20,000 were being used to treat his injuries.

It was initially thought he was a medical doctor. However, it was later confirmed he was an engineer who had a doctorate in aeronautical engineering. He had studied at Queen's University, Belfast, and Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge.

Seven men and one woman were initially held over the car-bomb attack on Glasgow and the attempted attacks in central London.

As well as Mr Abdullah, those arrested included Mohammed Asha, stopped on the M6 in Cheshire on June 30. He was also charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. Two trainee doctors, arrested at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley on July 1, were later freed without charge.