Police believe Junead Khan planned to stage a car crash, attack US military personnel with a knife and then blow himself up.
16:00, UK,Friday 01 April 2016
A delivery driver has been found guilty of preparing to carry out a terror attack against American troops near an RAF base in Britain.
Police believe 25-year-old Junead Khan from Luton planned to stage a car crash, target US military personnel with a knife and then blow himself up.
He allegedly came up with the scheme after driving past RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, RAF Feltwell in Norfolk, and RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire.
The centres in East Anglia have many US airmen based there.
The British Islamic extremist is now facing a life sentence after being convicted of preparing an act of terrorism in the UK between May and July 2015.
His trial at Kingston Crown Court heard he used his new job with a pharmaceutical firm, which he started last May, as cover to scout US air bases in East Anglia.
He also exchanged online messages with an IS fighter in Syria calling himself Abu Hussain, including describing attacking military personnel after faking a road accident.
According to prosecutors, Abu Hussain was actually Junaid Hussain who died in a US drone strike in Raqqa, Syria, weeks after his link with the planned UK attack was discovered.
Khan had made contact with him through social media and asked for instructions on how to make a rucksack bomb.
He told Hussain he had seen some soldiers driving, "but I had nothing on me or wouldve (sic) got into an accident with them and made them get out the car".
Hussain said: "Most soldiers live in bases which are protected. I suppose on the road is the best idea. Or if you want akhi I can tell u how to make a bomb."
Mobile phone pictures of Khan in his bedroom with an Islamic State-style black flag were discovered by police after they arrested him last July.
Officers later found the flag in the attic, while an al Qaeda bomb manual and Amazon searches for a large combat knife were on his computer.
Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said he "posed a real risk to public safety".
"He'd undertaken research and planning to make a pressure cooker bomb.
"And, what we think is, either before or during the attack, if he'd been compromised in any way he was going to detonate that device and commit suicide."
He was convicted, alongside his 23-year-old uncle Shazib Khan, of preparing to go to Syria to join IS.
In 2014, Junead Khan ignored a number of attempts by police to talk to him at his home.
In a text message to his uncle, he joked: "Lol got some visit form Luton Police Prevent Team counter terrorism and domestic extremism. They can go do one good. I was at work."
No comments:
Post a Comment