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Man convicted of planning Isis-inspired Remembrance Sunday attack Man convicted of planning Isis-inspired Remembrance Sunday attack
(about 2 hours later)
A British man has been convicted of planning an Islamic State-inspired knife attack on the streets of London around Remembrance Sunday. A British-based Islamic extremist has been found guilty of plotting a Remembrance Day beheading on the streets of Britain, inspired by a “chilling fatwa” from Islamic State.
Nadir Syed, 22, was convicted after a trial at Woolwich crown court of planning the attack, similar in style to the murder of a British soldier, Lee Rigby. Nadir Syed, 22, from Southall, west London, planned to emulate the brutal murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
The jury was unable to reach verdicts on Haseeb Hamayoon, 28, and Yousaf Syed, 20, and a retrial has been ordered. Police believe his arrest four days before Remembrance Sunday last November prevented a terror attack targeting police and soldiers that could have been even worse than the one resulting in Rigby’s horrific death.
It can now be reported that Syed had planned to launch the attack in 2014 after listening to a speech by Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, which also urged extremists to target France. It is thought the Remembrance Day plot was one of seven Isis-linked attacks David Cameron said were foiled in the past year.
Dressed in a burgundy sweatshirt and wearing an Islamic skull cap he showed no reaction as he was convicted of preparation of terrorist acts, after 50 hours and 56 minutes of jury deliberations. “He hated the country he was brought up in and hated the police, hated the soldiers and completely detested them,” said a Scotland Yard spokesman.
Jurors were unable to reach verdicts in the case of Yousaf Syed, 20, and Haseeb Hamayoon, 29. Yousaf Syed from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Hamayoon from Hayes, west London, denied planning acts of terrorism. The judge ordered a retrial. Syed denied plotting the attack but a jury at Woolwich crown court found him guilty of preparation of terrorist acts between 20 September and 7 November 2014, inspired by a fatwa issued by the Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in the autumn of 2014.
The verdict on Syed was reached on Wednesday last week, but it could not be reported before the judge’s decision to order a new trial of the other two defendants. After two weeks of deliberations, the jury were unable to reach verdicts on two co-defendants, Yousaf Syed and Haseeb Hamayoon, and a retrial has been ordered.
Jurors were told Nadir Syed also appeared in a video in which he stamped on a poppy and kicked it towards a drain, in an act supposedly condemning it to hell. The jury heard that Nadir Syed became obsessed with the murder of Rigby and had responded on social media to the fatwa, which called on all Muslims to arm themselves and attack “disbelieving” westerners, to “rig the roads with explosives”, “attack their bases” and “cut off their heads”.
Prosecutor Max Hill QC said the action was demonstrative of his “attitude to the poppy as the remembrance image in this country”. By November last year, he was actively searching for knives of “sufficient quality to source an attack”. During the trial, the jury heard the he was “unnaturally interested in murders and beheadings”. He stored and shared material glorifying the beheadings of Isis victims including the British taxi driver Alan Henning and the US journalist James Foley.
Hill said the timing of this search, in the days before Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day 2014, was “no coincidence”. In an encrypted chatroom on the Telegram app he discussed the fatwa and terror attacks on westerners by Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John”. Syed described Michael Adebolajo, one of Rigby’s killers, as “a diamond geezer” and also had an image of him with the soldier’s dismembered body and other images of beheading victims and suicide bombers on his phone.
Nadir Syed was arrested on 6 November shortly after buying a blade, the court heard. He told police he went to a shop to buy knives for his mother because “she was complaining about the state of the knives in her kitchen”. He also said “wearing a poppy supports murdering terrorist”.
Hill said the fatwa that inspired Nadir Syed urged followers to rise up against westerners and “rig the roads with explosives for them. Attack their bases. Raid their homes. Cut off their heads.” Although there was no specific attack plan, he had bought a kitchen knife hours before his arrest and the communications relating to the fatwa intensified in the weeks before Remembrance Day. It was enough evidence for the jury to side with the prosecution, who believed an attack was real and imminent.
He added: “This fatwa, and the worldwide attacks that followed, inspired the defendant to plan his own attack in this country, emulating the attack on Lee Rigby carried out by Michael Adebolajo, who he considered to be a Mujahid or Islamic fighter.” In the run-up to Remembrance Sunday he chatted on WhatsApp and on Telegram, where he shared his opinions on two forums, Tawheed Wal Bara’ah (Belief and Salvation), which had 45 members, and The Lads, which had just four members, including preachers Abu Waleed and Abu Haleema.
Nadir Syed will be sentenced on a date to be confirmed. By last November the plot had developed from discussions to the sourcing of knives to carry out the attacks. Conscious that one of Rigby’s killers had bought a knife the day before he attacked, the police swooped. “Once you get into buying knives you’re in the end game. That was the tipping point,” said one Scotland Yard source.
During the trial Syed cut an immature figure, giggling at evidence. He testified said he was only buying a kitchen knife as a gift for his mother.
“I hadn’t seen her for a long time. She’s a housewife and she does a lot of cooking, so I thought I’d get her a set of Victorinox knives,” he told the court.
But Syed’s true character emerged in jokes he made with a friend about finding a wife who wanted to kill non-believers.
He sent a photograph of himself in a suit to the friend and asked for a wife of “any race” as long as she had “kill kuff manhaj” meaning someone who believed in killing non-believers.
Syed’s cell at Belmarsh jail was searched during the course of the trial and documents were found on which he had drawn a picture of a sword with the words, “the clanging of swords,” written in Arabic and blood dripping from the blade.
In a diary there was a sketch of a masked man with a knife standing in front of an Islamic flag while the words “Islamic State!” had been written out with an Islamic flag on another page of the notebook.
Syed was born in Barking, east London and the family moved first to Slough before returning to Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2006, then returning to Britain in 2009 and settling in Southall.
He ended up two years behind at school after being forced to drop his GCSEs during one trip back to Pakistan caused by his father’s business interests in “land and property”.
In the end he left West Thames College in Hounslow in 2013 at the age of 20 with a level 3 BTEC in combined science and said he then decided to have a “little break and think what to do for university”.
“I was getting my head around what field to go into permanently,” he added.
He applied for catering and “fundraising” jobs he said but did not work full time and was signing on for jobseeker’s allowance.
He drank alcohol, smoked, went to parties, but turned his back on drink and rap music during Ramadan in 2012 and, after attending mosques in Southall and Hounslow, started going to lectures in a Southall restaurant and attending marches and demos against the war in Syria.
“I felt good staying away from any bad influences. My education was better and especially my relationship with my family was much better,” Syed said.
Over six weeks, jurors heard how Syed’s attitude to extreme violence permeated all aspects of his life. The pincode for his phone was 77911, a reference to the London bombings on 7 July 2005 and the World Trade Center attack in 2001.
Nadir first got into trouble in December 2013 when he was involved in an antisocial behaviour incident . A month later, his passport was seized when he breached his bail conditions trying to board a flight to Turkey.