Posted by Jack Lee
Terror plotters: (clockwise from top left) Mohammed Irfan, Hamid Elasmar, Amjad Mahmood, Zahoor Iqbal, Parviz Khan and Basiru Gassama are alleged to be part of a Birmingham-based terrorist cell.
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Leicester Crown Court was told that the terror cell had sent money and equipment to Pakistan for the use of terrorists trying to kill British soldiers on the Afghan border.
Prosecutor Nigel Rumfitt QC said Khan wanted to get “physically involved” in the bloodshed but was prevented by “his bosses overseas” because his supply operation was so valued.
Instead, the court heard, he hatched the plot to kill a soldier in the UK.
He decided to target a Muslim fighting in the British Army and asked another member of the cell to identify a potential victim.
Mr Rumfitt said: “The prosecution say that Parviz Khan (shown left) is a fanatic. “He is a man who has the most violent and extreme views. Khan was enraged by the idea that there were Muslim soldiers in the British Army, some of them from the Gambia in West Africa.
A British soldier in Iraq (file picture): The four have pleaded guilty to a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. “He decided to kidnap such a soldier with the help of drug dealers in Birmingham. “The soldier would be approached in the Broad Street nightlife area, lured into a car and taken to a lock-up garage and murdered with his head cut off – “like a pig”. “This atrocity would be filmed. They would have the soldier’s military card to prove who he was.” The court heard that the film would be released through Khan’s terrorist network to the Al Jazeera TV station.
He told his henchmen: “Young (Tony) Blair’s going to go crazy.” Gambian national Basiru Gassama was the man given the task of finding a target from his own community.
The court heard that Khan played Gassama footage of numerous beheadings as he explained his plan.
But Khan was “blissfully unaware” that he had come to the attention of the security services, who built a dossier on the suspects, giving them codenames including Motorway Madness and Haunted Room.
The device recorded a series of incriminating conversations, including one in which Khan told how firelighters used to start camping stoves made ideal explosives. In July 2006 Gassama visited Khan’s terrace home in Alum Rock, Birmingham. Khan persuaded to him help identify the soldier victim.
Gassama, 30, of Hodge Hill, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to failing to inform the authorities of the plan to kill at an earlier court hearing and will be sentenced at the end of the trial, alongside Khan and two other members of the cell.
Mohammed Irfan, 31, and Hamid Elasmar, 44, both also from Birmingham, have admitted offences relating to the cell’s activities.
Details of the four men’s part in the plot emerged as two more men, Amjad Mahmood and Zahoor Iqbal, went on trial after denying terrorist offences.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-511048/Islamic-extremist-gang-plotted-kidnap-British-Muslim-soldier-behead-like-pig.html#ixzz0dGpzrIJN
Weighing more than a ton and destined for a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, they were cynically described as medicine and clothes aid for earthquake victims.
In fact, the court heard, Parviz Khan’s shipments contained a “shopping list” of equipment ordered by his terrorist contacts.
They included digital cameras on which suicide bombers could record “video wills” for release after they had blown themselves up.
The illicit cargoes, in dozens of boxes, also contained electronic equipment, laser sight-finders, night vision aids, sleeping bags, walkie-talkies and waterproof map-holders, said Nigel Rumfitt QC, prosecuting. Other items included split-finger gloves, which are popular with anglers – and also with snipers.
“He’s sending out these fishing gloves so they can keep their hands warm and when it’s time to kill someone they can slip their fingers out and shoot accurately,” said the barrister.
Khan was bugged telling Zahoor Iqbal about a hi-tech video camera for the terrorists to make propaganda films and “wills” for broadcast on the Al Jazeera TV channel, the jury heard.
“He has been asked by his masters in Pakistan to send a sophisticated video camera so they can release films through Al Jazeera,” said Mr Rumfitt.
“They wanted to make films and what sort of films is he telling Iqbal that they want to make? They are of night operations, day operations and wills.”
Islamic extremist gang ‘plotted to kidnap British Muslim soldier and behead him like a pig’ ‘We will sort it’: Terrifying bugged conversation explains deadly kidnap plot. The wills, said the lawyer, would be filmed messages to be broadcast on television once the terrorists had blown themselves up.
Khan planned to use the international aid response to the devastating Pakistani earthquake in 2005 as cover for his activities.
When he was stopped in July 2006 as he returned from Pakistan, he was found with a notepad.
“He was bringing a shopping list from terrorist contacts of materials they wanted sent back in the next delivery,” said Mr Rumfitt. Among the items written in the notebook was a laser range-finder.
Iqbal was allegedly involved in sending cash to Pakistan, where it would be collected by Khan on visits to the country for his terrorist contacts.
In one year more than 12,000 was sent via a Birmingham financial company to an office in Pakistan, the jury heard. The trial continues.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-511205/Cargo-death-Terrorists-earthquake-relief-shipment-secretly-hid-tools-execution.html#ixzz0dGoPi18e