Fanatic behind plot to kidnap and behead soldier may never go free

A FANATIC who plotted to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier was jailed for life yesterday and told it was impossible to predict when, if ever, he would be released.

Refusing to turn up to court, Parviz Khan was handed the minimum 14-year prison term in his absence after previously pleading guilty to the kidnap plot and to supplying equipment for terrorists on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Four men were sentenced with him – one for failing to tell police about Khan's plot and three for helping the 37-year-old with his illicit supply-line.

But Khan, who claimed to be a full-time carer for his elderly mother, was the prime mover in the Birmingham-based terrorist cell. Sentencing him at the end of a trial of two co-defendants at Leicester Crown Court, the judge, Mr Justice Henriques, told him: "You have been described by the Crown as a man who has the most violent and extreme Islamist views and as a fanatic.

"Having studied over the last month (covert recordings], I unhesitatingly accept that description of you. You not only plotted to kill a soldier, but you intended to film a most brutal killing."

The trial of Zahoor Iqbal and Amjad Mahmood revealed how Khan had turned from a drinker and smoker who liked nightclubs into an extremist obsessed with the speeches of Osama bin Laden and Abu Hamza.

In between visits to Pakistan between 2004 and 2006, he stocked up on fundamentalist propaganda, including films of beheadings and footage of the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States and the 7 July, 2005 bombings in London.

He even tried to indoctrinate his young children – a bugging device planted by the security services at his home in Alum Rock, Birmingham, recorded him teaching a five-year-old how to carry out a beheading.

Khan was claiming benefits of more than 20,000 a year during the time he plotted to snatch the serviceman off the streets and decapitate him "like a pig", the court was told.

It was a plot police believe was supported by al-Qaeda and his aim, said Mr Justice Henriques, was to deter any Muslim from joining the British Army.

Michael Wolkind, QC, defending, said Khan was as much a fantasist as a fanatic. But anti-terrorist police were convinced they had stopped a man who would have carried out his plot.

Khan refused to attend court throughout the proceedings. As he entered guilty pleas last month, he told the court via video link: "I would just like to say greetings to all Muslims."

Mr Justice Henriques told Khan yesterday: "So rampant are your views, so excitable your temperament, so persuasive your tongue and so imbued with energy are you, it's quite impossible to predict when, if ever, it will be safe for you to be released into the public. It was a plot whose purpose was to undermine democratic government, to demoralise the British Army, to destabilise recruitment, and to cause anguish to the then prime minister and the loyal citizens of the country."

Basiru Gassama, 30, of Hodge Hill, Birmingham, was jailed for two years and faces deportation after pleading guilty at a previous hearing to a failure to disclose information about the plot.

Mohammed Irfan, 31, of Ward End, and Hamid Elasmar, 44, of Edgbaston, both Birmingham, were given four years, and three years and four months respectively after they pleaded guilty to helping Khan with the supply of equipment.

Zahoor Iqbal, 30, of Perry Barr, and described in court as Khan's "right-hand man", was jailed for seven years after a jury found him guilty for his part in the shipment of goods.

Amjad Mahmood, 32, of Alum Rock, was cleared by the jury of knowing about the plot and failing to tell the authorities, and of supplying equipment.

On tape – boy, 5, told how to cut a man's head off

MI5 agents bugged Parviz Khan's home and recorded him teaching his five-year-old son how to carry out a beheading.

In one recording, made in November 2006, Khan's co-accused, Hamid Elasmar, asks the boy: "How do you cut their neck?"

Khan prompts the youngster, saying: "How do you cut them with a knife? Show me. … Like this. Good."

In another tape, Khan asks his son, "Who do you love?" The child replies: "I love Sheikh Osama bin Laden."

Asked by his father, "Who do you kill?" the child answers "America kill", "Bush I kill" and "Blair kill".

In another recording, Khan tells his co-accused, Basiru Gassama, that he planned to behead the soldier "like you cut a pig, man".

Imagining he is addressing the soldier, Khan says: "You have to, you want to go to Islamic countries, with, fight with kuffar (unbelievers] against Muslims?"

He adds: "Like that, I think you cut it out/off like you cut a pig. Then you put it on a stick and we say, 'This is to all (Muslims], man … we want to join the kuffar army, this is what will happen to you.'

"Then we throw the body, burn it, send the video to the chacha (uncles, a term for mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan or Pakistan]. The chacha can release it there.

"These people gonna go crazy. Didn't say the chacha, he do this in the other country, he release it there. Where is the chacha?

"He could be next door, he could be upstairs, he could be downstairs. These people will go crazy, man."

Khan is heard telling his accomplice that other Muslims would be frightened to join the British Army.

"Look like, chop him up, man. We don't want to join this army. At least we can stop them from doing the haram (what is forbidden in Islam].

"Then all these other people who slowly joining the British Army, these Pakistani, these Afghan, these Gambia. They gonna say, 'No, man, I don't want that'."

CLAIMING STATE BENEFITS TO WAGE FINANCIAL WAR ON THE WEST

PARVIZ Khan boasted to friends that he was waging financial war on the West, while "bleeding" a monthly total of 1,669 in benefits from the British taxpayer.

Khan – whose role looking after his 71-year-old mother "earned" him an allowance of 160 a week – was recorded telling associates the only reason he was living in the UK was to steal the nation's wealth and send it abroad.

"Muslims live here for one reason – to get their wealth and give it to the Muslims," Khan told a friend while being bugged by the security services.

Explaining his remarks, Khan then added: "We shouldn't be living here... we are going to cut his throat, her throat… Britannia, America… by living among them we are going to squeeze them financially.

If we cancel their finance and take it off them and give it to the Muslims, it's a big blessing for us."

Referring to non-believers, Khan then said fellow Muslims should "walk like them, speak like them, but don't be like them". He added: "When you take from the Kafir (non-believers], then you know you are a soldier.

"It doesn't mean you need a machine gun; either we can be physical soldiers or we can be financial. Islam, man… getting strong and can destroy this Christianity."

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