LONDON (RNS) A Muslim student described by a judge as “thoroughly radicalized” has been sentenced to five years in prison in Britain for creating terrorist movies and “inflammatory” videos he fed to the Internet.
A jury in London’s Old Bailey criminal court convicted Mohammed Gul of five terrorist offenses with publications that police said “could have encouraged the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
In passing sentence on the 23-year-old student on Friday (Feb. 25), Judge David Paget said Gul’s actions amounted to “pouring petrol on the fire.”
He told the defendant, “I am in no doubt that you have been thoroughly radicalized” in extremist Islamism.
When he was arrested two years ago, prosecutors said, police also seized two computers and other storage devices, on which they found so much incriminating evidence that the judge said left them with a “Herculean task” of sifting through it all.
Police described their investigation as the largest review of such data ever undertaken by Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism officers.
The seized material included video footage of terrorist destruction of cars and tanks in the Middle East, and graphic footage of executions and “martyrdom” videos of suicide bombers.
– Al Webb, Religion News Service