Islamist plotters were inspired by “freely available extremist material” to plan a murderous attack on an English Defence League rally, a judge said as he jailed them for up to 19-and-a-half years.
Six men were jailed at the Old Bailey after travelling to the rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in June last year armed with an arsenal of weapons including two shotguns, swords, knives, a nail bomb and a partially-assembled pipe bomb.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC told the men: ” How was it that you became involved in a crime of this gravity? At least part of the answer to that question must come in the tide of apparently freely available extremist material in which most of you had immersed yourselves.”
Jewel Uddin, 27, Omar Mohammed Khan, 31, Mohammed Hasseen, 24, Anzal Hussain, 25, Mohammed Saud, 23, and Zohaib Ahmed, 22, who are all from the West Midlands, admitted planning the attack at a hearing on April 30.
Khan, Uddin and Ahmed were jailed for 19-and-a-half years with an extended licence period of five years, and the other three were given jail terms of 18 years and nine months and an extended licence period of five years.
EDL leader Tommy Robinson and his deputy Kevin Carroll called out “God save the Queen” from the public gallery as sentence was passed. Sobs could be heard from other observers, and shouts of ” Allahu Akbar”.
The judge said the extremist material was “not difficult either to obtain or share”.
He said: “In this case, it can only have served to reinforce the defendants’ resolve to behave in the hideous way that was planned”.