Friend of Lee Rigby's killer jailed for disseminating pro-terrorism lectures

The "best friend" of Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo has been jailed at the Old Bailey for encouraging terrorism in lectures he broadcast over the internet.

Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan and his co-accused, Shah Jalal Hussain, were sentenced after pleading guilty to disseminating a lecture called The Dust Will Never Settle, by Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida ideologue based in Yemen, in which he said the burning of flags, demonstrating and boycotting was "more befitting the followers of Ghandi than Mohammed".

Sentencing Hassan to two three-year sentences to run concurrently and Hussain to three years and 28 months to run consecutively, Nicholas Hilliard QC, the common serjeant of London, said: "One piece of material like this on the internet is one piece too many. A particularly aggravating factor, and in my view, a significant one, is that this is the second time you have been before a court for an offence under the Terrorism Act. I am quite sure both of you knew you were playing with fire."

Hassan was arrested after giving a pre-recorded interview to BBC Newsnight claiming that MI5 had harassed Adebolajo, who was found guilty of killing Lee Rigby last year.

Both men had already served jail sentences in 2008 for inciting terrorism overseas and terrorist fundraising after delivering inflammatory speeches at Regent's park mosque in central London.

Despite his prison sentence, he gave a short monologue for Channel 4 expounding his belief that sharia law was a better option for British society because the justice system was failing and too soft on criminals.

Both Hassan and Hussain were former members of the banned group al-Muhajiroun and followers of the preacher Anjem Choudary.

Hassan, 29, from Walthamstow, east London, used the name Abu Nusaybah, and Hussain, 31, from Whitechapel, east London, used the name Abu Muwahhid in an attempt to mask their identities.

During his trial last year, Adebolajo decribed Hassan as "one of my best friends" and said that he had introduced him to al-Muhajiroun.

Hassan also pleaded guilty to encouraging terrorism in a series of lectures posted online in November 2012, in which he told his followers: "We're not encouraging anybody to go and do any acts of terrorism or whatever within this country or anything like that, but if you want to go to jihad, we're not going to stop you, by the way, because we're not the police, that's not our job, OK?"

He encouraged followers to emigrate to "Muslim lands" and told them that jihad meant fighting, adding: "Fighting means to kill somebody."

"It's the fact of the jihad, the preparation of the jihad, the fighting of the jihad, this is what causes terrors inside the hearts of the mushrik [polytheists] and even the enemies that you don't know," he added.

Hassan quoted Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and spoke of Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan – areas where al-Qaida had strongholds – as places where jihad should be fought.

Hassan added: "I'm not inciting anybody to do any acts of terrorism, I am just – you know – speaking generally."

But he spoke of the "evil ideologies of democracy and freedom and manmade law" and talked of Britain as an enemy.

"Why waste your life in the west just waiting for one day to either be arrested or to remain silent for the rest of your life until you die?"

Hussain had also pleaded guilty to encouraging terrorism in a video called Signs of a Good Death in Islam, in which he listed 20 ways of getting to heaven, including dying "on the battlefield" fighting western forces, and telling his audience: "Every Muslim should want martyrdom. Only a foolish person would not want it."

In a home video found on his computer, filmed around the time of the Regent's park sermon, he and his wife joked about their son growing up to fight the Americans and chop off Tony Blair's hands.

Source http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/06/friend-lee-rigby-killer-michael-adebolajo-jailed-disseminating-pro-terrorism-lectures