THE Court of Appeal has quashed the convictions of two Rochdale Muslim men jailed over extremist Islamic literature.

Aitaz Zafar, aged 21, of Bishop Street, Hamer, and Awaab Iqbal, 20, of Grove Terrace, Bradford and formerly of Charlotte Street, Balderstone, were part of a Bradford University ring convicted by an Old Bailey Jury in July last year.

They received a three year sentence after being accused of having extreme Islamic terrorist-related material as part of an alleged plan to travel to fight in Afghanistan.

But on Wednesday they were cleared and freed by top judges.

Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said their conviction was unsafe.

The men, alongside three others, were convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 of possession of material suspected to be connected with the ‘commission, preparation or instigation’ of terrorism.

According to prosecutors the five were found to have radical Islamic material, said to encourage terrorism, stored on their computers and discs.

However, their lawyers argued at London's Appeal Court that the material in their possession was mere ‘propaganda’ and the ‘maverick’ decision to prosecute them had even violated their human rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression.

The nation's top judge - the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips - sitting with Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Bean, overturned the convictions of all five and freed them.

There will be no retrial.

The other men who mounted the appeal are Akbar Butt, 21, of South Avenue, Southall, London; Mohammed Raja, 20, of Holcombe Road, Ilford, Essex; and Usman Malik, 21, of Laisteridge Road, Bradford.

The students were arrested after Raja - a London schoolboy at the time - ran away from home in Ilford on February 24, 2006.

He left a note for his parents saying he was going to fight abroad by way of the ‘conventional method of warfare’, but he returned home three days later after a telephone call in which his parents begged him to come back. 

Subsequent police inquiries led them to arrest the other four men. And searches led officers to find what prosecutors claimed were radical Islamic and other material, including a US military manual, on their computers.

Further computer investigation revealed conversations in which some of the Bradford students had communicated with others and claimed to be devotees of Jihad.

Zafar, Iqbal and Malik had each received three-year sentences for their crimes, Butt had received 27 months and Raja two years.

The five men's appeals revolved around the extent to which Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 extended to cover the type of ‘propaganda’ material found in their possession.

Their lawyers argued that an offence could only be committed under that section if there was a ‘direct connection’ between the articles possessed and an intended act of terrorism.

Prosecutors had claimed that the men held the articles to ‘incite’ themselves to extremist acts, to keep their spirits up. But Lord Phillips said there were problems in connection with this particular case.

He said: "Our hesitation comes from our belief... that those responsible for Section 57, including Parliament, did not envisage that it would extend to possessing propaganda for the purpose of incitement to terrorist acts."