Jail for Islamist terror gang

The six men were sentenced yesterday after travelling to the rally in Dewsbury last summer armed with an arsenal of weapons including two shotguns, swords, knives, a nail bomb and a partially-assembled pipe bomb.

Sentencing the gang to a combined total of more than 114 years in prison, a judge said it was likely they would have attempted further attacks if they had not been foiled by chance after arriving late at the rally.

He said he had given “anxious consideration” as to whether to jail the men from the West Midlands for life, but by “a narrow margin” chose instead to impose extended sentences.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC told the men: “How was it that you became involved in a crime of this gravity? At least part of the answer to that question must come in the tide of apparently freely available extremist material in which most of you had immersed yourselves.”

The judge said the extremist material was “not difficult either to obtain or share”. and added: “In this case, it can only have served to reinforce the defendants’ resolve to behave in the hideous way that was planned.”

Jewel Uddin, 27, Omar Mohammed Khan, 31, Mohammed Hasseen, 24, Anzal Hussain, 25, Mohammed Saud, 23, and Zohaib Ahmed, 22, admitted planning the attack on June 30 last year at an earlier hearing.

Khan, Uddin and Ahmed were jailed for 19-and-a-half years with an extended licence period of five years, and the other three were given jail terms of 18 years and nine months and an extended licence period of five years.

EDL leader Tommy Robinson and his deputy Kevin Carroll called out “God save the Queen” from the public gallery as sentence was passed. Sobs could be heard from other observers, and shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great).

The men will serve at least two-thirds of the jail terms before they can be considered for parole, after being imprisoned on the third day of the sentencing process at the court in London.

They received a reduction of a quarter in their jail terms for pleading guilty before a trial was due to start.

All of the men except Hasseen travelled to Dewsbury where an EDL rally was taking place, ready to cause mass injuries and deaths.

The gang’s plan only failed because the event finished earlier than expected, meaning they arrived at 4pm to discover the rally had ended at 2pm.

Judge Hilliard said: “There is no reason to suppose that a further attempt may not have been made in the future had the defendants not been apprehended.

“I find it inconceivable that 
your resolve would have evaporated.”

“You intended to engage in a violent confrontation with those attending the EDL rally and use the weapons and the improvised explosive device to cause serious injuries, and you anticipated that some victims may have died.”

The judge said he had seen and heard material linked to Islamophobic obscenities used at some EDL events, but that violence was not the right response to this.

As well as targeting EDL supporters, police officers and members of the public could have been caught up in the bloodshed, the court heard.

Hasseen admitted a separate charge of possessing extremist documents, for which he was given two years to run concurrently.

Ahmed was convicted in September last year for possessing extremist material and had been released on bail eight days before the planned attack as he faced that charge.

The plot was only foiled when two of the men, Khan and Uddin, were stopped by chance as they travelled back to Birmingham from Dewsbury after missing the rally.

A police officer pulled their Renault Laguna over because it looked old, and the car was flagged up as uninsured because the gang had entered the registration number incorrectly on an online form by one digit.

The car was taken to a pound near Sheffield, where staff discovered the plotters’ deadly arsenal. The car also contained ten copies of a hate-filled note referring to David Cameron and the Queen.