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Background: Ringleader spun terror web in classrooms
CYBER-terrorist Aabid Hussain Khan was a knowledgeable, charming and manipulative groomer of young impressionable Muslims and had links with some of the world's most notorious terror suspects, it can now be revealed.
He was also a "facilitator of terrorism", using websites and chatrooms to peddle his murderous propaganda and encourage his followers to take up arms against the West.
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Main report: Web terrorist mastermind kept file on Royal Family
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Until today the full of extent of Khan's connections with known and suspected terrorists could not be reported, but the Yorkshire Post can now reveal it was Khan who was responsible for radicalising a 21-year-old Glasgow student who is now serving a prison sentence for terrorism offences. After months of email and MSN chats with Khan "wannabe suicide bomber" Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, was jailed for eight years last October after he was caught in possession of videos on bomb-making and weapons use.
Khan is also linked to "Terrorist 007" Younis Tsouli, who became the world's most wanted cyber-jihadist and used the internet to incite terrorist attacks on US navy bases. Tsouli had six video clips of American landmarks when he was arrested in 2005; Khan was in possession of exactly the same footage from two of the clips.
Khan was also in regular contact with one of Tsouli's associates, Waseem Mughal, 25, who was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last year for incitement to commit terrorist acts amounting to murder.
Outwardly Khan may have been living an unremarkable suburban life – flipping burgers in Bradford and playing cricket in its streets – but behind closed doors he was forging close links with a string of extremists.
Khan portrayed himself as a bit of a wheeler-dealer and a "Del Boy" character who hoped to make a fortune designing a range of Islamic street wear for sale in the US and Canada.
With email addresses such as delboy@safemail.com and another containing the phrase foolsandhorses, he described his designs as "Ghetto clothing but with an Islamic theme".
But Khan was no lovable rogue – he was convinced his mission in life was to wage war on Western values and spent his evenings reading tomes of Islamic literature and scouring the internet for information about holy war against the West.
It was at the age of 12 that he swapped his toys for a hatred of Western values and a fanatical obsession with jihad and terrorism. He spent hours in front of a bedroom PC surfing news bulletins about the suffering of fellow Muslims overseas.
"I felt upset and angry with the onslaught against innocent women and children in countries such as Russia, " he admitted at his terror trial at London's Blackfriars Crown Court.
As his teens came and went he busied himself downloading a library of articles on pyrotechnics, jihad and war. The eldest of four brothers, he joined online discussion forums, swapping views on "tactics and strategies" employed by Muslim fighters, "what weapons they used, the individuals involved, their profiles, things like that".
By the time he was 21 Khan had a "huge" virtual library on DVDs and at least one hard drive. Taking the Koran's concepts at face value, Khan believed it was the duty of every Muslim to die in the fight for global Sharia – Muslim law – and believed in wiping out other faiths, particularly Jews and Christians.
Britain, America and "apostates" – Muslims who had abandoned true Islam – were also legitimate targets in his campaign to destroy other faiths and establish Sharia law.
Khan believed only those who died as martyrs for the cause would receive ultimate redemption in the afterlife. After a trip to Pakistan, and convinced he was ready to martyr himself for Islam, Khan set about looking for young Muslims he could persuade to do the same.
He scoured internet chatrooms and set up his own forum in a bid to turn disaffected youngsters like schoolboy Munshi on to Muslim extremism. After listening to Khan, Munshi declared it was his burning ambition to go overseas and kill Western soldiers and spent evenings swatting up on making napalm instead of revising for his exams.
In his heated online chats, Khan encouraged his contacts to attend terror camps in Pakistan. In one MSN conversation Khan discussed starting "a cyber-school to teach cyber-warfare" to launch "e-jihad" and bring down anti-Muslim websites.
Khan also translated recruitment material from al-Qaida commanders in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan on a website he hosted. And he kept a screensaver of the faces of the 9/11 suicide bombers in the US and recordings made by an American extremist describing the London and Madrid bombings as "blessed attacks".
He had an al-Qaida terrorist handbook with guidelines on "beating and killing hostages" and assassinating foreign tourists and, chillingly, along with maps of the New York and Washington subways were detailed references to London's Tower Bridge.
But Khan's online conversations were being monitored by counter-terrorism detectives late in 2005. As soon as the ringleader fell his cohorts went into hiding but were quickly arrested.
'Model' pupil secretly studied ways of wiping out non-Muslims
FOR nearly a year Hammaad Munshi led a double life.
By day he attended lessons at the local Dewsbury comprehensive and appeared the model pupil.
But in the evening the schoolboy from a well respected family spent hours surfing jihadist sites and distributing material to others as part of a "worldwide conspiracy" to "wipe out" non-Muslims.
His computer contained detailed instructions about making napalm, other high explosives, detonators and grenades, and "how to kill".
At the age of just 15 he was recruited by Aabid Khan, 23, a "key player" in radicalising the impressionable and vulnerable here and abroad with his message of "violent jihad".
They lived 10 miles apart, phoned each other during 2005 and 2006, and swapped documents about "black powder explosives".
Khan wanted to fulfil the teenager's wish to go abroad and "fight jihad", and during one internet exchange discussed how to smuggle a sword through airport security.
The Dewsbury-born teenager was detained a day after Khan, as he and friends returned from Westborough High School.
The IT whizz-kid – whose online Arabic profile "fidadee" means a "person ready to sacrifice themselves for a particular cause" – ran a website selling hunting knives and Islamic flags and was the cell's computer specialist.
Two bags of ball-bearings – the shrapnel of choice for suicide bombers – were found in one of his pockets
On his PC were al-Qaida propaganda videos and recordings promoting "murder and destruction". The teenager, whose grandfather Yakub Munshi, runs Dewsbury's Sharia court, also stored notes on martyrdom under his bed.
"One who is not taking part in the battle nor has the sheer intention to die is in the branch of hypocrisy, " they read.
"I don't want to be a person like it has been mentioned about, I don't want to be deprived of the huge amounts or lessons Allah has prepared for the believers in the hereafter."
But the schoolboy had sobbed when his uncle told him off for reading a weapon-making book. He insisted he only scoured the internet to learn how to make bombs and guns out of curiosity.
Munshi's barrister Harendra de Silva, QC, said the "naive" teenager had fallen under the spell of Khan.
"He was 16 when he was arrested and perhaps 15 when most of the events in this case took place, " he said.
"Please don't judge him on as he appears now, an 18-year-old with the beginnings of wispy facial hair. Judge him as a 15-year-old, with all the failings, curiosity, naivety, and what he describes in his own statement as all the stupidity of youth."
The QC added: "That internet can of course on the one hand be a sea of knowledge, if approached discriminatingly by the wary swimmer. But it can be a fetid cesspit, and one into which Hamaad Munshi must have fallen from time to time."
Munshi, like Sultan Muhammad, was arrested after Khan was stopped at Manchester Airport. Post office night sorter Muhammad, 23, was Khan's cousin and "right-hand man". They regularly chatted about killing non-believers and wanted Muslims to set up their own community run under Sharia law in Britain.
Muhammad even suggested a remote area of Scotland as the ideal spot, where people of all ages would "prepare for fitness and launch Jihad". The pair also chatted about buying five litres of acetone for bombs on internet auction site eBay.
The post officer worker fled to London and was arrested two weeks later near a safe house.
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