Nine Men Jailed over London Stock Exchange Terror Threat
Metro, February 9, 2012
Woolwich Crown Court had heard how the group had planned to raise money for a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and recruit Britons to attend.
The court was told how the men planned a ‘Mumbai-style’ series of attacks upon a number of targets in the run-up to Christmas in 2010. In 2008 166 people died when terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai.
A hand-written target list found at one of the defendant’s home listed the names and addresses of London mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the US embassy and the London Stock Exchange.
The nine men, from Cardiff, Stoke-on-Trent and London, admitted a range of terrorism-related offences.
Three of them received indeterminate sentences for public protection.
Mohammed Shahjahan, 27, described as the plot’s ringleader, was jailed for a minimum term of eight years and ten months.
Usman Khan, 20, and Nazam Hussain, 26, each received minimum terms of eight years.
The other sentences handed down saw Mohammed Chowdhury jailed for 13 years and eight months; Gurukanth Desai for 12 years; Omar Latif received ten years, four months; Abdul Miah was handed a 16-years, ten-month jail term; Mohibur Rahman got five years; and Shah Rahman was jailed for 12 years.
Piers Arnold, reviewing lawyer of the Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said after the hearing: ‘These men were motivated to act as they did in large part by extreme jihadist propaganda circulated on the internet by organisations like al-Qaida in the hope that impressionable young men in the west will be inspired to carry out attacks in the places where they live.’
