Dramatic evidence in ‘Internet’ terrorism trial

In what is believed to be the first prosecution of its kind in Britain, the men who reportedly have close ties to al-Qaeda, pleaded guilty to inciting acts of terrorism \'wholly or partly\' outside Britain via Web sites which advocated killing non-Muslims. E-Brief News reports that Younes Tsouli, Waseem Mughal and Tariq al-Daour were found guilty of conspiracy to murder at London\'s Woolwich Crown Court after a trial lasting almost six months. The men also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks, credit card and charge card companies. Tsouli (23), of London, was jailed for 10 years; Mughal (23), of Chatham, Kent, for seven-and-a-half years and al-Dour (20), of London, to six-and-a-half years. The China Daily reports that Morocco-born Tsouli, who prosecutors said uploaded guides to building suicide vests onto the Internet, used the online ID ‘irhabi007’ – the Arabic word for terrorist and the code number of the fictional British spy. With accomplices al-Daour and Mughal, Tsouli offered advice and motivation to would-be terrorists on a myriad of Web pages run from their London homes, prosecutors said. The group was the leading distributor of terrorist material on the Internet before they were arrested in 2005, said Evan Kohlmann, a US-based terrorism consultant who gave evidence in the case. London police said the men had set up Web sites, using stolen credit cards and identities, to promote al-Qaeda propaganda, including the beheading of Western hostages. Silicon.com reports that Peter Clarke, head of London\'s Counter Terrorism Command, said it was the first time anyone had been prosecuted in Britain for using the Internet to incite terrorism. In another unique aspect of the case, detectives said Tsouli and al-Daour had never met and had communicated only online. Full China Daily report Full Silicon.com report

In a separate case, the four men convicted of the attempted bombings in London on July 21 2005 have each been sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison. They were told that their al-Qaeda-controlled plot was a ‘very nearly successful attempt at mass murder’, says a report in The Independent. The judge in Woolwich Crown Court said it was clear the foiled attacks were part of a sequence started by the July 7 bombings, which killed 52 people two weeks earlier. If the July 21 bombers had been successful they would have killed or maimed hundreds of people using London\'s transport system and blighted the lives of thousands. The convicted men – Muktar Said Ibrahim (29), Yassin Omar (26), Ramzi Mohammed (25) and Hussain Osman (28) – were told that none of them would be considered for release before 2047. All four men, who were found guilty of conspiracy to murder for trying to blow up Tube trains and a bus, came to Britain as refugees from countries in the war-torn Horn of Africa and were allowed to stay in the UK or were granted British citizenship. The judge said that although the two cells (this one and the July 7 group) were separate, he had no doubt they operated in parallel and that their attacks were inspired and controlled by al-Qaeda. The two remaining defendants in the July 21 case face a retrial after the jury failed to reach verdicts. Manfo Kwaku Asiedu (34), the \"fifth bomber\" who abandoned his device, and Adel Yahya (24), who left Britain a month before the bombings, face a new trial for conspiracy to murder. Full report in The Independent