Delivery driver Junead Khan used his job as cover to scout US Air Force bases in East Anglia for potential victims.
16:24, UK,Friday 13 May 2016
An extremist has been jailed for life, with a minimum term of 12 years, for planning an attack on US military personnel in the UK.
Junead Khan, 25, was a "committed supporter" of Islamic State and plotted to kill a soldier using a knife in the style of Jihadi John, who he is said to have idolised.
The British-born delivery driver used his job at a pharmaceutical firm as cover to scout US Air Force bases in East Anglia for potential victims.
When police arrested Khan last July, they found photos of him posing in his bedroom with an IS-style flag and his computer was found to contain an al Qaeda bomb manual and Amazon searches for a large combat knife.
Detectives also found that Khan had exchanged messages online with an IS fighter calling himself Abu Hussain, who prosecutors claim was actually British-born Junaid Hussain.
Hussain was killed in a US drone strike in the Syrian city of Raqqa just weeks after his link to the planned UK attack was discovered.
Sentencing Khan at Kingston Crown Court in London, Mr Justice Edis said he was "not far from the commission of the murder to be committed by horrifying method in the street in order to create terror and terrorist propaganda in this country".
Khan, from Luton, was also found guilty, along with his uncle Shazib Khan, 23, of preparing to go to Syria to join IS.
Shazib Khan was given an extended sentence of 13 years in prison, of which he will have to serve eight years in custody.
The judge said the two men, both of Bangladeshi background, had rejected the opportunities Britain had offered them.
He added: "They have both received education in this country at the public expense. They have lived as citizens of a free country which is committed to equality under the law.
"They both believe that Sharia law is the only legitimate law and both reject democracy because it involves law being made by people and not by God.
"They have rejected the protection of the law of this country and education they have received by becoming committed supporters of Isis (IS) - an organisation which wishes to control the world and which will stop short of no barbarity in order to do so."
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