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Terror student Siddique jailed for eight years
A British-born Muslim student described as a “wannabe suicide bomber” has been jailed for eight years for a series of terror offences.
Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, who is said to be Scotland’s first homegrown terrorist, was found guilty last month of providing instruction on weapons and booby-trap bomb making over the internet.
He showed videos of beheadings and suicide bombers to fellow students at the Glasgow Metropolitan College.
The small town shopkeeper’s son told friends that Osama Bin Laden was his god, and one classmate overheard him saying that he wanted to “bomb Glasgow”.
Siddique was detained at Glasgow airport last April amid fears that he was might have been on his way to Canada via Pakistan to join alleged Islamic extremists in Ontario.
The alleged Canadian plot included detonating truck bombs, blowing up shopping malls and storming the Canadian Broadcast Centre and the parliament building.
The alleged plotters are also accused of planning to behead Stephen Harper, the prime minister, and other leaders.
Twelve men and five teenage boys are in custody in connection with the plot.
When Siddique was convicted, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said the case was a reminder that the threat from terrorism was real and “not isolated to any particular region”.
The prosecution told the trial that documents and film footage linked to Siddique were a “call to arms for Muslims”.
Brian McConnachie, prosecuting, said: “It’s clear from that material that the whole idea was to glorify martyrdom operations, which we call suicide bombings.”
Siddique logged on to internet chat rooms using the pseudonym Ya Ya Ayash, the name of the Hamas chief bombmaker who was killed by Israelis who planted a device triggered when he answered his mobile phone.
They also found an al-Qa’eda recruiting video on the laptop urging young Muslim men to become suicide bombers, and a photograph on his mobile phone of protestors carrying placards saying: “Behead those who insult Islam”.
Siddique was said to have been a model pupil at school who became radicalised after going to college in Glasgow, where the computing student became obsessed with religion and a hatred of America.
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