Stock Exchange Bomb Plotters Are Jailed

Nine members of an al Qaeda-inspired terror group that plotted to bomb the London Stock Exchange and build a terrorist training camp have been jailed.

The group also planned to send five bombs through the post to various targets in the run-up to Christmas 2010 and discussed carrying out a "Mumbai-style" attack, which in 2008 killed 166 people.

A hand-written target list was found at one of the defendant's homes listed the names and addresses of London Mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the US Embassy in London and the Stock Exchange.

The bomb plot was stopped by undercover detectives before firm dates for the attacks were set or any homemade bombs were produced.

Three members of the group who planned to raise funds for the camp in Pakistan and recruit British Muslims received indeterminate sentences for public protection.

Father-of-two Mohammed Shahjahan 27, who was regarded as the leader of the group, was jailed for a minimum term of eight years and 10 months.

Stoke-on-Trent-based fellow extremists Usman Khan, 20, and Nazam Hussain, 26, were ordered to serve at least eight years behind bars.

Khan and Hussain, who also talked about setting off pipe bombs in the toilets of pubs in their home town, were said to be "more serious jihadists" than their fellow defendants.

The four members of the group who plotted to plant a pipe bomb in the toilets of the Stock Exchange all received extended sentences, meaning they will have to spend an extra five years on licence after they are freed from prison.

At London's Woolwich Crown Court, Mr Justice Wilkie jailed Abdul Miah, 25, from Cardiff, for 16 years and 10 months, noting that he was the leader of a branch of the terrorist network and set the agenda "by virtue of his maturity, criminal nous, experience and personality".

His brother, Gurukanth Desai, 30, from Cardiff, and Shah Rahman, 28, from east London, were jailed for 12 years, and Mohammed Chowdhury, 22, from east London, who was described as the "lynchpin" of the group, was sentenced to 13 years and eight months.

Chowdhury spoke about carrying out a "Mumbai-style" attack at the Houses of Parliament or the London Eye, the court heard, and the hand-written target list was found at his home.

Desai and Miah were bugged claiming that fewer than 100,000 Jews died in the Holocaust and talking about how Hitler "had been on the same side as the Muslims" because he understood that "the Jews were dangerous".

Omar Latif, 28, from Cardiff, was jailed for 10 years and four months, with an extended period on licence of another five years, for attending meetings with the intention of assisting others to prepare or commit acts of terrorism.

The judge said: "By his presence at those meetings he was contributing by encouraging the others to form the intention to commit those terrorist acts and to prepare for them."

Mohibur Rahman, 27, from Stoke-on-Trent, received a five-year prison sentence for possessing two copies of the online al Qaeda magazine Inspire for terrorist purposes.

The men - who are all British citizens apart from Bangladesh-born Chowdhury and Shah Rahman - have spent 408 days on remand and this will be deducted from their sentences.

All members of the group had pleaded guilty to a variety of terror-related offences.

The group were not members of al Qaeda but were inspired by the terrorist network and its former Yemeni leader, Anwar al Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike last year.

After the four-day sentencing hearing, Piers Arnold, reviewing lawyer of the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime and counter-terrorism division, said: "This was a case about nine young men who in October 2010 formed a group for the purpose of carrying out acts of terrorism.

"What they had in common was that they all held extreme fundamentalist religious beliefs and were committed to converting those beliefs into terrorist action."

He added: "These men were motivated to act as they did in large part by extreme jihadist propaganda circulated on the internet by organisations like al Qaeda in the hope that impressionable young men in the West will be inspired to carry out attacks in the places where they live."