Terrorism sympathiser jailed for 33 months
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Version 0 of 1. A terrorism sympathiser who translated extremist videos and uploaded them to YouTube has been jailed for 33 months. Muhammad Suleman, 25, from Crumpsall, near Manchester, pleaded guilty to distributing or circulating a video entitled Flames of War as well as an electronic version of al-Qaida magazine, Inspire 12. The court heard how police searched Suleman’s home on 19 December and seized digital media, including a pen drive that was found in a jacket pocket in his bedroom. It was found to hold more than 430 documents containing extremist literature. Two laptops were also seized, one of which had software that allowed access to the “darknet”. Officers saw travel documents belonging to Suleman, who was planning to fly to Pakistan on 23 December. A few hours later, he tried to change his flight, firstly to the evening of 19 December, but when that was not available he changed it to a 9pm flight the next day from Manchester. But officers foiled his attempt to flee and arrested him at Manchester airport, where his flight was delayed. Some of the electronic documents included magazines detailing how to make homemade bombs and car bombs, training to become a jihadi fighter at home rather than “risking dangerous travel abroad”, information on security measures, including the sending and receiving of encrypted messages, and methods to detect and foil the plots of spies. In May, Suleman pleaded guilty to five further charges of having Inspire issues 1, 2, 6, and 12 and a document entitled “10 methods to detect and foil the plots of spies”. Two other charges were ordered to be left on file – one count of dissemination of Facebook posts in December, and one of professing to belong to a proscribed organisation, Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), in October last year. Jailing him on Friday at the Old Bailey, in London, Judge Charles Wide QC rejected the suggestion that Suleman had approached his interest in conflict in an “objective, careful and balance-seeking” journalistic way. But the judge accepted his guilty pleas to disseminating the propaganda on the basis that he had been reckless rather than encouraging terrorism. Wide told him: “It is apparent that for a substantial period starting in 2011, you have been intensely interested in conflict, particularly in Pakistan, and so far as that interest is concerned, there is an abundance of evidence that you have been for some time sympathetic to the aims and efforts of those rightly regarded as terrorists. “The extreme nature of the content of much of the material can cause such revulsion that the temptation is to impose very long sentences, which in many cases will be richly deserved. So far as your case is concerned, I will wholly resist the temptation.” Outside the court, DCS Tony Mole from the north-west counter-terrorism unit said: “From the literature and videos found in Suleman’s possession, it is clear he is a staunch supporter of Islamic extremism, and whilst there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest he engaged in any attack planning, he went out of his way to distribute extremist materials and make them accessible to others. “The materials downloaded contained extremely dangerous and disturbing information, which were not stumbled upon by chance, but were actively searched for. Suleman also translated a number of existing extremist videos into English and uploaded them onto YouTube, so others could view and understand their content. This case highlights the very real dangers of misusing material that is readily available on the internet.” He added: “I hope therefore that this welcome result acts as a stark warning to others – this is not about policing people’s freedom to browse the internet, but taking action against those who choose to misuse the internet and social networking sites for criminal activity.” |