Trial of Four West London Terror Suspects Opens Islamic State-inspired attack was to target soldier or police officer By Alexis Flynn
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trial-of-four-west-london-terror-suspects-opens-1453126617
—The trial of four men from west London who were allegedly poised to carry out an Islamic State-inspired gun attack in the U.K. capital opened on Monday.
Prosecutors say British Muslims Tarik Hassane, 22, Suhaib Majeed, 21, Nyall Hamlett, 25, and Nathan Cuffy, 26, were planning to murder a police officer or soldier with a silencer-equipped pistol, but the plan was foiled when authorities arrested them in 2014.
The case underscores the growing number of Islamic extremist plots in Europe targeted at police or military personnel.
Potential targets may have included the Shepherd’s Bush police station in West London and the nearby Parachute Regiment barracks, prosecutors alleged, after a forensic examination of Mr. Hassane’s electronic device found he had used Google Street View to case their locations.
“If the plot had been allowed to run its course, it would have resulted in a terrorist murder or murders on the streets of London, according to the warped ideology of the defendants, in the cause, and for the sake, of Allah,” lead prosecutor Brian Altman said.
Searches of the men’s laptops and phones revealed Islamic State propaganda, most notably a copy of a now-notorious fatwa by senior commander Abu Muhammad al-Adnani calling on supporters in the West to carry out attacks.
All four have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder and preparing terrorist acts.
Prosecutors say Mr. Hassane, a medical student who lived between Sudan and the U.K. and Mr. Majeed, an Iraqi-born physics student at university King’s College London, procured a pistol, ammunition and a silencer from Mr. Cuffy, with the assistance of Mr. Hamlett.
Mr. Cuffy and Mr. Hamlett pleaded guilty to weapons offenses at an earlier hearing. The duo separately face additional firearms charges related to how the weapons were intended to be used, which they both deny.
In the trial of Mr. Hassane and his alleged co-conspirators on Monday, jurors heard how the men grew up in proximity to one another in a gritty stretch of the city’s generally affluent western neighborhoods.
Although Mr. Hassane spent long periods in Khartoum training to be a doctor, he returned frequently to the London housing project where he grew up, and was in close contact with Mr. Majeed, a childhood friend.
Mr. Hassane relayed instructions to Mr. Majeed that would form the basis of the plot, prosecutors alleged. For his part, Mr. Majeed, the physics student, was “an essential cog in the machine,” said Mr. Altman, whose chief responsibility was to ensure that electronic communications between the men were encrypted to escape detection from law enforcement.
Transcripts of secured conversations between Mr. Hassane and Mr. Majeed with other individuals in their wider circle were read out in court by prosecutors.
Most notably, in one message to the group in July, Mr. Hassane swears allegiance to Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mr. Altman said.
Using the secure messaging platforms Telegram and WhatsApp, and speaking in a mixture of London street slang and Arabic, the men also discussed jihad, martyrdom and the war in Syria, prosecutors said.
“Telegram got nuff info to get us sent to Guantanamo for life,” said one message read to the court by Mr. Altman.
The trial is expected to last three months.
It comes as British police arrested a record number of terrorist suspects last year. Authorities say the dramatic rise of Islamic State from the embers of war in Syria and Iraq has galvanized a new generation of homegrown extremists.
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