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."
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Downloading extreme information on the internet should never be a crime. It is a basic freedom of us all to be free to listen to any opinion we wish. Have the Brtitish authorities not learned from the the war in Ireland? Where innocent men and women were jailed for massive terms simply for listening to a particular point of view? To read "Mein Kampf" does not make you a Nazi. Well done to the judges of the appeal court.
Would you say the same if it had been child pornography that had been downloaded? Yes, to a certain extent you cannot stop people from at least listening or finding out more about this extremist stuff. BUT there is a fine line and, unfortunately, these extremists tend to use that to their advantage. Society is pandering to them and I for one am sick of it!
Dear etta, I think you should be in charge of the "Thought Police". Who the hell do you think you are to dictate to other free thinking human beings, what they can and cannot download on the internet. Thirty years ago, Irishmen where arrested and tortured in Long Kesh and other concentration camps. No chages against them no judge, no jury. Times have not changed much.
I'm not dictating anything. My Grandad was Irish and had to put up with a hell of a lot of prejudice thanks to extremists. My point is that free thinking is fine for open minded, decent people. But unfortunately there are those that push past the lines and create hurt, pain and anguish. How do you deal with that eh?