Student brother of ISIS suicide bomber planned terrorist attack after buying 500 ball bearings
The brother of an ISIS suicide bomber who carried out an attack in Iraq was plotting an atrocity in the UK, a court has heard.
Student Mohammed Awan, 24, was arrested by counter-terror police after buying 500 ball bearings – which prosecutors claim could be used to make a homemade bomb.
They also discovered a ‘significant volume’ of extremist propaganda, including a guide to operating a sleeper cell in the west and videos of brutal beheadings, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
The Sheffield University undergraduate, from Huddersfield, denies planning a terror attack, claiming he intended to use the ballbearings to catch rabbits.
The defendant’s brother, Rizwan Awan, was killed in a suicide attack having travelled to Turkey in 2015 with his girlfriend Sophie and appearing to have joined ISIS.
Jurors heard that the brothers were in contact with each other in August 2015.
Awan’s internet searches and possession of extremist material was also “progressing” from April 2015 onwards, prosecutor Simon Davis told the jury.
Items seized included 11 mobile phones, 16 memory sticks, and around 60 SIM cards, containing a host of terrorism related material.
Police from the North East Counter Terrorism Unit (NECTU) had swooped on June 1 this year, days after the ballbearings were delivered to the family home on Rudding Street in Huddersfield.
The defendant’s address at Dun Street in Sheffield was also raided and more digital media recovered by police.
One document found was titled “How to Survive in the West” – a key terrorist publication, jurors heard, found in a folder on a memory stick headed “My Stuff” amongst files on his university coursework.
The document is a guide book advising how to become a sleeper-cell, advice on using ball bearings as shrapnel and how to make bombs.
Awan claimed the memory stick belonged to his dead brother and he kept it for sentimental reasons.
But the prosecution say Rizwan Awan’s own digital devices had been reset to factory settings and wiped clean before he travelled to Syria.
Police also found a video titled “Commander Hamzah Zinjibary’s Training Camp” – titled after a senior al-Qaeda leader killed in a US drone strike, which appeals to young Muslims to join Islamic State, confront and terrorise the enemy and glorifies the brutal methods used.
Other graphic videos glorifying Isis violence showed beheadings, bodies being dragged behind vehicles, and rows of men being executed by being shot in the head.
Mr Davis added: “You put all that together, it is the acceleration what was going on, we say, purely from the mind set to the practical.”
Asked about his purchase of ball bearings Awan, told police it was nothing to do with terrorism and claims to be a keen angler and hunter who was planning to use them to hunt rabbits with a catapult.
Such a method is “more of a theoretical possibility than a practical one,” the court heard.
Awan denies three terror-related charges; two of possession of a document or record containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
He also denies a single count of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts or assisting others to commit such acts.
The trial was adjourned until Wednesday morning.
Source: Mirror
