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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Calling for jihad against MPs nets 12 years in the GreyBar Hotel

Bilal Zaheer Ahmad is a "viper" and will spend the next 12 years in jail, with 5 years of what is Englands version of parole, for inciting religious hatred and posting nasty things on pro-jihad websites. 

For the next 12 years, the only item he will raise is a plastic spoon from the prison commisary.


From the Guardian July 29 by Caroline Davies

Radical Muslim jailed for calling for jihad against MPs

An IT graduate who wrote messages on an Islamic extremist website calling on Muslims to "raise the knife of jihad" and attack and kill British MPs who voted in favour of the war in Iraq has been jailed for 12 years.

Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, 24, posted the threats on the US-based RevolutionMuslim.com website with a full list of all MPs who had voted in the House of Commons in favour of the war and links providing personal contact details.

He called on them to emulate Roshonara Choudhry, who had attempted to murder the Labour MP Stephen Timms with a knife at his East Ham constituency surgery six months previously, Bristol crown court heard.

Ahmad, who worked for an insurance company in Telford, Shropshire, also posted a link to the Tesco website listing cheap knives, urging would-be fanatics to use them to carry out attacks.

Jailing him for 12 years, with an additional five years' extended period on licence, Mr Justice Royce said: "You became a viper in our midst willing to go as far as possible to strike at the heart of our system."

Ahmad, who holds British and Pakistani passports, had purported to be a British citizen, said Royce. "But what you stand for is totally alien to what we stand for in our country." He added that his views were "corrosively dangerous".

"It's important MPs can hold constituency surgeries without the threat of someone pulling out a knife and trying to kill them. You were intent on striking at the heart of our democracy and if our politicians are to be at risk from those like you, then the message must go out loud and clear that this country will not tolerate such threats to its democratic processes."

Ahmad posted his threat on 3 November, the day after Choudhry, a 21-year-old university student, was jailed for life for the knife attack on Timms in May last year. She stabbed him twice with a six-inch knife, damaging his liver and perforating his stomach. She later said she had been influenced by the radical sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based preacher and al-Qaida leader.

Police arrested Ahmad, at the time living in Dunstall, Wolverhampton, on 10 November. He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to soliciting murder, publishing written material with intent to stir up religious hatred and three counts under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which covers collecting information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

Mark Dennis QC, prosecuting, said as well as providing the list of MPs he advised "that the best place to 'encounter them in person' was at their constituency surgery". He attached a link to The book of Jihad, a source of inspiration for Choudhry, calling for a renewed attack upon Timms and the "destruction" of not only the MP but also the judge who sentenced Choudhry.

The website was an established source of information for Muslims holding extreme views and those who wanted to carry our their threats, added Dennis.

The day before Choudhry was sentenced Ahmad posted on Facebook: "This sister has put us men to shame. WE SHOULD BE DOING THIS."

On arrest, Ahmad confessed responsibility for the posting. He said: "I shouldn't have let my emotions get away from me. It was completely irrational. It was tongue in cheek, I'm not in a cell or anything like that."

Uh huh.

Read it all

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