Yet Another Group of British Homegrown Jihadists Sentenced to Jail

By Evan Kohlmann

In yet another landmark legal case in the United Kingdom regarding Internet-based terrorism, a judge in London has sentenced a group of five British-born youngsters to a total of 13 years in prison for conspiring to use the web in order to accumulate vast amounts of terrorist propaganda in hopes of eventually traveling to Pakistan and joining Al-Qaida's forces there. The convicted defendants--Mohammed Irfan Raja, Usman Malik, Aitzaz Zafar, Awaab Iqbal, and Akbar Butt--were all between the ages of 17-21 and had made contact with each other through an Internet chatroom. In explaining his decision, Judge Peter Beaumont admonished the defendants: "Each of you is British. You were born here, your families lived here, you went to school and university here, you hold British passports. You live under the protection of its laws, which give you freedom of speech and religious observance, yet each of you were prepared to break its laws. Why? Because in my judgment you were intoxicated by the extremist nature of the material each one of you collected - the songs, images and the language of violent jihad - and so carried away by that material were you that each of you crossed the line. That is exactly what the people that peddle this material want to achieve and exactly what you did... To stop them and you and to protect this country and its citizens abroad, a message has to be sent."

This past spring, I was formally requested by the United Kingdom Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to help identify and assess the swath of extremist material seized from defendants Raja, Malik, Zafar, Iqbal, and Butt. As a result of my analysis, I produced a 27-page expert report, in which I concluded:

"...The cached material is generally of fairly recent origin and thematically tracks the most extreme wings of Al-Qaida in Iraq and Saudi Arabia that have specialized in fringe tactics such as beheadings and suicide bombings. There is a specific, disturbing emphasis on rituals associated with suicide bombers and justifying such sacrificial actions, even when they result in the deaths of innocent civilians. It is not simply a matter of one or two items easily located via general searches on the Internet, but rather an extensive and impressive reference library of terrorist-related documents and videos that would require many concentrated hours of browsing and downloading to assemble... significantly more than one would expect from a mere curious websurfer with a 'passing interest'... The evidence... communicates the general aims and ideology of Al-Qaida and affiliated groups to a wide, global audience; it further communicates specific guidance on the use of Al-Qaida’s preferred military tactics such as suicide bombings; it fosters a sense of organization and purpose for isolated extremists living in Western countries who are drawn to Al-Qaida; and, finally, it encourages even those who have no direct connection to Al-Qaida to join its cause and execute military operations on its behalf around the world, including the use of suicide bombings."

My findings were based upon the presence of a number of specific items that I outlined in my report, including a vast quantity of material acquired from a shadowy online organization known as At-Tibyan Publications. In the wake of the demise of Azzam Publications in late 2002, At-Tibyan has gradually taken over as the premier source of English-language terrorist propaganda. The group maintained a popular English-language Internet discussion forum for jihad supporters living in the West which has been locked with user passwords since at least late 2005 in an attempt to evade law enforcement scrutiny. Mirroring the role of the now-absent Azzam Publications, At-Tibyan also produced its own original online content—primarily translations of mujahideen recruitment material obtained from Al-Qaida commanders in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Rather than merely translating news reports or offering background on particular military operations, At-Tibyan focused on distributing ideological material designed to convince likeminded individuals to sacrifice their lives in the cause of jihad. For instance, it was At-Tibyan Publications that was responsible for producing an English-language edition of the notorious Al-Qaida in Iraq propaganda video “The Battle of Omar Hadid”, a copy of which was found in the possession of the four jailed Britons. The men also had in their custody what appeared to be saved HTML web pages from the At-Tibyan online discussion forum, wherein “various members [are] discussing their religion. One, an Ibn El Sheikh talks about being famous when he has gone… [there are] long heated discussions between the following [users], Abu Dujanah, al-Muwahhid, c4explosive re: killing women and children.” No less significant was another At-Tibyan-translated document found with the defendants in this case: "The Islamic Ruling on the Permissibility of Self-Sacrificial Operations: Suicide or Martyrdom" originally written in Arabic by the founder of Al-Qaida's network in Saudi Arabia, the late Shaykh Youssef al-Ayyiri. Indeed, while Western analysts have been quick to latch on to the name of Abu Musab al-Suri (a.k.a. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar) when it comes to the process of Internet-based homegrown radicalization, terrorism cases such as this one demonstrate that the works of other competing figures within Al-Qaida--such as al-Ayyiri and Abdullah al-Rashood--have (thus far) had a much greater impact in influencing the recruitment of outsiders, especially those living in the West, thanks to the translations produced by At-Tibyan Publications.

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