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Terror ring claiming human rights breach
8/ 2/2008
TWO students from Rochdale, locked up for possessing extreme Islamic material as part of an alleged plan to fight the Jihad, have launched appeals against their convictions.
Aitzaz Zafar, aged 20, of Bishop Street, Hamer, and Awaab Iqbal, aged 20, of Grove Terrace, Bradford, but formerly of Charlotte Street, Balderstone, were part of a Bradford University terror ring which was found to have amassed a library of Islamist propaganda with which to brainwash young Muslims.
They were arrested alongside Usman Malik, aged 21, of Francis Street, Wolverhampton, and Akbar Butt, aged 20, of South Avenue, Southall, after Mohammed Irfan Raja ran away from his East London home in February last year.
Using the internet, the group made contact with 19-year-old Raja and encouraged him to join them in travelling to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
Raja, of Holcombe Road, Ilford, left a note for his parents saying he was going to fight abroad and that he would see them in heaven, but returned home three days later after his mother went on hunger strike.
During raids on the defendants’ homes, police found materials said to be intended to encourage terrorism or martyrdom.
Iqbal even fancied himself as one of the 9/11 bombers and superimposed his own face in a picture of the 19 hijackers behind the Twin Towers atrocity.
After a trial at the Old Bailey in July last year, Iqbal and Zafar were both sentenced to three years in a young offenders’ institution.
Malik was jailed for three years, Butt was sentenced to two years and three months in a young offenders’ institution and Raja to two years in a young offenders’ institution.
But on Tuesday, all five launched their appeals, claiming that their human rights had been violated by the courts.
Joel Bennathan QC, representing Zafar at the Court of Appeal in London, said the material they possessed was simply ‘propaganda’ and so their actions should not have been ‘caught’ by the offence with which they were charged.
He said to include ‘theological and philosophical’ material in the offence could be in breach of the five youths’ rights to freedom of thought under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Zafar’s co-accused are being separately represented, but have adopted Mr Bennathan’s main arguments.
Opening his case, he told the country’s top judge, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, that to use Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to bring proceedings for possession of propaganda offended against the principles of freedom of speech.
At the trial, the prosecution alleged that the material was possessed by the group in order to inspire them to pursue a plan to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight.
Mr Bennathan said that, for Section 57 to apply, there would have to be a clear link between the possession of the materials and the ‘commission, preparation or instigation’ of terrorism.
The cases are being contested by Andrew Edis QC, on behalf of the Crown, but he has not yet begun to argue his case.
The court has reserved its judgment in the case and a ruling will be given in writing ‘as soon as possible’.
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11/02/2008 at 11:31