Lying Jihadist
The following BBC report shines a welcome light on the motives and behaviour of Islamist fighters who have been leaving the UK to take part in Syria's terrible civl war.
Now even this man's wife, Toslima Akhtar, poured scorn on his behaviour describing Choudhury as a fantasist, yet we have the ridiculous spectacle of commentators in the UK of comparing these jihadists to the International Brigades who fought against fascism in Spain in the 1930s.
I think it's high time these people were made to eat their words.
Mashudur Choudhury: Serial liar and jihadist
Choudury online: Just one of his multiple identities
A Portsmouth man accused of trying to join Islamist fighters in Syria has become the first person in the UK to be convicted of a terrorist offence relating to the conflict. A jury at Kingston Crown Court found Mashudur Choudhury guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism after a two-week trial. But what exactly was Choudhury up to - and why does this conviction matter?
A Portsmouth man accused of trying to join Islamist fighters in Syria has become the first person in the UK to be convicted of a terrorist offence relating to the conflict. A jury at Kingston Crown Court found Mashudur Choudhury guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism after a two-week trial. But what exactly was Choudhury up to - and why does this conviction matter?
Mashudur Choudhury: Faces substantial sentence
If there is one thing that is true about Mashudur Choudhury, it is that he is a liar and a fantasist.
Throughout excruciating evidence in his two-week trial, the jury heard how he had:
If there is one thing that is true about Mashudur Choudhury, it is that he is a liar and a fantasist.
Throughout excruciating evidence in his two-week trial, the jury heard how he had:
- faked a cancer diagnosis
- used prostitutes abroad
- invented a fake business
- created multiple online personalities
The father-of-two is one of six men from Portsmouth who went to Syria in 2013. He is the only one to so far return. He claimed that he never intended to fight, but was looking for an opportunity to move his family abroad to escape what he said were failures in his home life.
Relying on a wealth of information gleaned from Twitter and other social media, prosecutors said Choudhury had broken terrorism laws because he had sought to intervene violently in the country's internal affairs for an ideological cause - the establishment of an Islamic state.
Contact on the battlefield
Choudhury's journey to Syria began in the summer of 2013, when contacted his friend Ifthekar Jaman, who had already travelled to fight.
Jaman, who had joined one of the country's jihadist groups and is now believed to be dead, gave a revealing interview to BBC Two's Newsnight programme about his experiences.
Ifthekar Jaman spoke to Newsnight while he was in Syria
Choudhury gathered information about the conflict, asked his friend about military training and what to expect if he joined him.
Social media recovered by detectives, including tweets and other online conversations, show that Choudhury talked about dying a martyr's death.
He joked that they could form a special group of Portsmouth fighters in Syria - the al-Britani Brigade Bangladeshi Bad Boys.
Speaking from the witness box, Choudhury denied being a jihadist, saying he went to Syria looking for a better life.
He said he believed he had failed his wife after the collapse of a business venture and had ultimately constructed a series of increasingly elaborate fantasies and lies to make people feel sorry for him.
Those lies included pretending he had stomach cancer. That persuaded his sister-in-law to fund medical treatment in Singapore, and he invented other reasons for foreign holidays to escape his home life.
While in Singapore, the court heard he had hung around in Starbucks and sought out prostitutes.
Choudhury said that he was now "utterly ashamed and embarrassed" by his lies. He had considered performing "hijra" - a ritualised migration to a Muslim country - to get away from his past life, which is where Syria came into the picture.
But the prosecution said that notion of an innocent migration was just a cover story for the jury.
Journey to the frontline
In July 2013, Choudhury and other young men from the city came together in Portsmouth's Jamia Mosque to secretly plan their journey to the front line.
There is no suggestion that the mosque's authorities knew of the plan - but the trial heard that some members of the Muslim community feared the men were extremists and ultimately assisted the police investigation.
The court heard that five of the men travelled:
- Choudhury
- Muhammad Hamidur Rahman
- Assad Uzzaman
- Muhammad Mehdi Hassan
- Mamunur Mohammed Roshid
They met three other Britons and the group of eight contacted Jaman for help in getting over the border.
Choudhury told the court that as he travelled deeper into Syria, he saw all the signs of a war. Burned-out cars littered the highway to the northern city of Aleppo. Their Syrian driver would tell them to duck as they passed sniper positions.
Sheltering in a rebel-controlled hospital in the bombed-out city, the men ate pasta as their table shook from artillery bombardment.
Choudhury saw corpses in body bags and a man whose hand had been chopped off as a punishment.
His account then diverged from the prosecution allegations. He told the jury that while the other Britons went to join a military training camp run by a jihadist group, he had asked the Syrians to get him out - and he ultimately flew home alone.
ISIS: One of the groups that British men have joined
After his arrest at Gatwick, Choudhury broke down in his police cell, sobbing about gun fire. Prosecutors say that he was recalling his training and that he had only returned because he had either lost his nerve or the fighters had rejected him.
Angry wife
But that wasn't the man recognised by Choudhury's wife, Toslima Akhtar. In emotional and angry evidence, she painted a picture of her husband as a useless fantasist who was incapable of joining the Syrian cause.
Until the start of the trial she had believed he had really suffered from cancer - and for an hour in the witness box she held forth about his failings as a husband, father and man. While she would be working all hours and looking after the children, he was lying in bed. When she was work, he would be texting her all day trying to get her attention.
When he texted her in 2013 suggesting they move to Syria, she completely flipped.
"I hate you," she replied. "You want to die in battlefield, go die. I really mean it, just go. I will [be] relieved at last."
In strong language, she told the court that she did not literally mean he should sacrifice himself on a foreign battlefield. She regarded his suggestion as yet another one of the "barmy" fantasies that had made her life a misery.
"I am telling him, 'Get lost,'" she explained. "'Go die, jump off a cliff. I've had enough.'"
While Mrs Akhtar believed her husband wasn't capable of fighting, his social media timelines were full of religious quotes about war, including arcane references to a belief held by some jihadi fighters that Syria marks the beginning of the end of the world.
Alison Morgan, prosecuting, said that while it was clear that Choudhury was a liar, he had also decided that a death on the battlefield offered him a way out of his miserable life.
"Going to fight and to be a martyr offered you a way out of yours sins, didn't it?" said Ms Morgan.
"No it did not," insisted Choudhury.
"You wanted to get away from your sins and your past?" she asked. "You were leading an appalling life. You had lied about your illness and you felt guilt and disgust - and you were terrified of the hereafter?"
"Yes," said Choudhury quietly.
Mashudur Choudhury will be sentenced on 13 June.
Here's another article drawing a false comparison between the International Brigades which fought in the Spanish Civil War and young British Muslims heading off to Syria to take part in a religious war between the rival Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
Now it may well be that not all Syria-bound teems are a threat, but comparing them to the volunteers who fought against fascism is a tad overblown especially if their real motivation is to replace one religious tyranny with another.
Not all Syria-bound teens are a threat, Ms May
By Joan Smith - The Independent
On a December evening in 1938, a large crowd gathered at London's Victoria station. They were joined by the future Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, as they waited to welcome home 305 British volunteers from the Spanish Civil War. More than 500 of their comrades had been killed, fighting for the democratically elected government. Its defeat left the country in the hands of General Franco, a brutal dictator who stayed in power for decades.
The British Battalion of the International Brigades has been celebrated in books and poetry but the exodus of 2,500 men and women to fight in a foreign civil war alarmed the British government. Recently released files show MI5 kept a close eye on the volunteers. Ministers even considered using the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act to stop the flow, but no one was prosecuted.
The parallel with modern-day Syria is not exact, especially now that groups linked to al-Qa'ida are taking a prominent role in the battle against Bashar al-Assad. But I can understand why idealistic young people are once again being drawn into a foreign conflict. A handful of British citizens has already been killed in Syria, including Brighton student Abdullah Deghayes, 18, who died fighting in Homs. Abdul Waheed Majeed, 41, from West Sussex, appears to have become the conflict's first British suicide bomber; he blew himself up outside Aleppo prison in February.
It is easy to see why our government is alarmed by Majeed's "martyrdom". But I'm uneasy about the Home Office's underlying assumption, which seems to be that anyone who wants to fight against Assad is a threat to the UK.
Last year, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, used her powers to strip British passports from 20 individuals who had dual Syrian-British nationality. Presumably she had reason to believe they posed a danger, but now the authorities' rhetoric has changed.
In a new campaign spearheaded by the police, Muslim women are being asked to take a bigger role in preventing young men from going to Syria to fight. Inevitably, this has been denounced in some quarters as tantamount to spying for the government, but the initiative has the support of some prominent Muslims. The brilliant Sara Khan, director and co-founder of the Muslim women's organisation, Inspire, points out that work to explain the sectarian nature of the war, and to counter the influence of extremist videos, has been going on behind the scenes for ages.
Every generation throws up a conflict which horrifies decent people. The rest of Europe left Franco to murder his way to power, supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Assad is just as ruthless, and he's supported by Russia, China and Iran. Of course I don't want to see more British teenagers dying in Syria. But we need to think about how to keep them safe, instead of treating them all as potential terrorists.
The death of a young British man has prompted further silly comparisons about the volunteers who fought in with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, but this ridiculous rewriting of history should not be allowed to go unchallenged.
Because Spain's civil war was a battle for democracy which was sadly lost and ushered in four decades of fascist rule under General Franco, whereas it's far from clear that any of the combatants in Syria actually support the concept of democracy and the need to protect essential freedoms including minority rights.
Al-Qaeda link to British teen killed in Syria
Dipesh Gadher and Robin Henry - The Sunday Times
After his arrest at Gatwick, Choudhury broke down in his police cell, sobbing about gun fire. Prosecutors say that he was recalling his training and that he had only returned because he had either lost his nerve or the fighters had rejected him.
Angry wife
But that wasn't the man recognised by Choudhury's wife, Toslima Akhtar. In emotional and angry evidence, she painted a picture of her husband as a useless fantasist who was incapable of joining the Syrian cause.
Until the start of the trial she had believed he had really suffered from cancer - and for an hour in the witness box she held forth about his failings as a husband, father and man. While she would be working all hours and looking after the children, he was lying in bed. When she was work, he would be texting her all day trying to get her attention.
When he texted her in 2013 suggesting they move to Syria, she completely flipped.
"I hate you," she replied. "You want to die in battlefield, go die. I really mean it, just go. I will [be] relieved at last."
In strong language, she told the court that she did not literally mean he should sacrifice himself on a foreign battlefield. She regarded his suggestion as yet another one of the "barmy" fantasies that had made her life a misery.
"I am telling him, 'Get lost,'" she explained. "'Go die, jump off a cliff. I've had enough.'"
While Mrs Akhtar believed her husband wasn't capable of fighting, his social media timelines were full of religious quotes about war, including arcane references to a belief held by some jihadi fighters that Syria marks the beginning of the end of the world.
Alison Morgan, prosecuting, said that while it was clear that Choudhury was a liar, he had also decided that a death on the battlefield offered him a way out of his miserable life.
"Going to fight and to be a martyr offered you a way out of yours sins, didn't it?" said Ms Morgan.
"No it did not," insisted Choudhury.
"You wanted to get away from your sins and your past?" she asked. "You were leading an appalling life. You had lied about your illness and you felt guilt and disgust - and you were terrified of the hereafter?"
"Yes," said Choudhury quietly.
Mashudur Choudhury will be sentenced on 13 June.
Syria Bound (3 May 2014)
Here's another article drawing a false comparison between the International Brigades which fought in the Spanish Civil War and young British Muslims heading off to Syria to take part in a religious war between the rival Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
Now it may well be that not all Syria-bound teems are a threat, but comparing them to the volunteers who fought against fascism is a tad overblown especially if their real motivation is to replace one religious tyranny with another.
Not all Syria-bound teens are a threat, Ms May
By Joan Smith - The Independent
On a December evening in 1938, a large crowd gathered at London's Victoria station. They were joined by the future Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, as they waited to welcome home 305 British volunteers from the Spanish Civil War. More than 500 of their comrades had been killed, fighting for the democratically elected government. Its defeat left the country in the hands of General Franco, a brutal dictator who stayed in power for decades.
The British Battalion of the International Brigades has been celebrated in books and poetry but the exodus of 2,500 men and women to fight in a foreign civil war alarmed the British government. Recently released files show MI5 kept a close eye on the volunteers. Ministers even considered using the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act to stop the flow, but no one was prosecuted.
The parallel with modern-day Syria is not exact, especially now that groups linked to al-Qa'ida are taking a prominent role in the battle against Bashar al-Assad. But I can understand why idealistic young people are once again being drawn into a foreign conflict. A handful of British citizens has already been killed in Syria, including Brighton student Abdullah Deghayes, 18, who died fighting in Homs. Abdul Waheed Majeed, 41, from West Sussex, appears to have become the conflict's first British suicide bomber; he blew himself up outside Aleppo prison in February.
It is easy to see why our government is alarmed by Majeed's "martyrdom". But I'm uneasy about the Home Office's underlying assumption, which seems to be that anyone who wants to fight against Assad is a threat to the UK.
Last year, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, used her powers to strip British passports from 20 individuals who had dual Syrian-British nationality. Presumably she had reason to believe they posed a danger, but now the authorities' rhetoric has changed.
In a new campaign spearheaded by the police, Muslim women are being asked to take a bigger role in preventing young men from going to Syria to fight. Inevitably, this has been denounced in some quarters as tantamount to spying for the government, but the initiative has the support of some prominent Muslims. The brilliant Sara Khan, director and co-founder of the Muslim women's organisation, Inspire, points out that work to explain the sectarian nature of the war, and to counter the influence of extremist videos, has been going on behind the scenes for ages.
Every generation throws up a conflict which horrifies decent people. The rest of Europe left Franco to murder his way to power, supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Assad is just as ruthless, and he's supported by Russia, China and Iran. Of course I don't want to see more British teenagers dying in Syria. But we need to think about how to keep them safe, instead of treating them all as potential terrorists.
Freedom Fighters? (24 April 2014)
The death of a young British man has prompted further silly comparisons about the volunteers who fought in with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, but this ridiculous rewriting of history should not be allowed to go unchallenged.
Because Spain's civil war was a battle for democracy which was sadly lost and ushered in four decades of fascist rule under General Franco, whereas it's far from clear that any of the combatants in Syria actually support the concept of democracy and the need to protect essential freedoms including minority rights.
Al-Qaeda link to British teen killed in Syria
Dipesh Gadher and Robin Henry - The Sunday Times
Abdullah Deghayes is thought to have been killed by a sniper
A BRITISH teenager killed fighting alongside his brothers in Syria had “most probably” joined the ranks of al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in the country, according to his father.
Abdullah Deghayes, 18, is thought to have been killed by a sniper in a battle involving extremists from Jabhat al-Nusra and the forces of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader.
The fighting, which took place close to the Turkish border, was so fierce that it took five days to recover Abdullah’s body.
As new details emerged of Abdullah’s death, The Sunday Times has discovered that his father, Abubaker, had travelled to Syria several times.
When he returned to Britain from overseas last week, he was stopped by police at Gatwick airport and had his mobile phones taken away. They were not returned until three days later.
Abubaker Deghayes, of Brighton, East Sussex, described his son as a “martyr” and believes he died fighting for a “just cause”.
However, he insisted that Abdullah and his younger brother Jaffar, 16, had travelled to Syria in February without his consent and that he had tried to dissuade them from getting involved in armed conflict.
Their older brother, Amer, 20, had already entered the country to fight and was shot in the stomach during the same battle in which Abdullah was killed.
Yesterday Jaffar, who was unharmed and is believed to be the youngest British jihadist in Syria, changed his Facebook profile photo to an image of Abdullah’s corpse.
Asked which rebel faction his sons had joined, Deghayes said: “I’m not sure, but most probably Jabhat al-Nusra.”
The group, also known as al-Nusra Front, was involved in heavy clashes with Assad’s troops in late March at Kasab, a border crossing in northeast Syria, where Deghayes said his son had died.
Another Briton, Abdul Majid, 41, from Crawley, West Sussex, had carried out a suicide attack on a Syrian jail this year for al-Nusra Front.
On Friday Deghayes, 45, whose brother, Omar, was held as a terror suspect in Guantanamo Bay for five years and was then released without charge, posted a video on Facebook as a tribute to his son which appeared to celebrate the jihadists opposing Assad.
Deghayes denied that he was encouraging others to take up arms, claiming people were free to make a “personal choice” over whether to fight in Syria.
The grieving father is no stranger to the country and said he had travelled there “several times” since 2012 to deliver aid. “We have warehouses out there and have established a school,” he said.
Deghayes is a trustee of the Al-Quds mosque in Brighton where in 2006 he told an undercover Sunday Times reporter that Tony Blair was “a legitimate target”.
Deghayes said he had meant the former prime minister was a target to be brought down from government after taking Britain to war in Iraq. The Press Complaints Commission, the industry regulator, had rejected his complaint against the newspaper.
Last week Deghayes said he had flown to Turkey in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Abdullah from joining the fight in Syria. He later travelled to Libya, the country from which his family originally fled as refugees.
Abdullah Deghayes was probably fighting with Jabhat al-NusraOn his return to Britain last Monday he was stopped at the airport. “I was questioned by police and my phones were taken to be checked,” he said.
When asked to elaborate, Deghayes said: “Is this a police investigation or [do] you want a story?” Sussex police refused to comment.
Abdullah was one of six siblings — five boys and a girl — who grew up in the UK. He was interested in engineering and was due to go to university next year. Friends said he had never mentioned Syria or shown signs of extremism.
Both Abdullah and his twin brother, Abdul, had been in trouble with police in the past although Deghayes said this was for “petty things”.
The Facebook musings of their younger brother, Jaffar, switch from those of a typical teenager — in one post he describes someone as a “tight ginger fat scav” — to the more political. One entry that he shared with friends states: “It seems the word ‘terrorism’ is only reserved for Muslims.”
After reading this article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, I was left with the distinct impression that George approved of all the actions being taken to oust Bashar al Assad and his murderous regime from Syria - including the suicide attack on Halab prison in Aleppo.
But then I stopped and wondered to myself is the the same George Monbiot, a prominent supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, who opposed an limited military strike on the Syrian regime last year - which failed to win support in the House of Commons?
If so, I think we should be told because I'm confused as to what George Monbiot is on about as he appears to support the rebels in Syria who are fighting to oust President Assad while drawing no real distinction between the Free Syrian Army insurgents and those linked to al-Qaida such as the al-Nusra Front.
George asks us to consider whether the suicide bomber was really a hero rather than a terrorist, but the answer that lies not so much in the act of blowing up the prison gates as in what al-Qaida stands for - what kind of society al-Qaida wants to create, if peace ever comes to Syria.
I read about the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 the other week so Monbiot is far from being the first person to raise the link between civil war in Spain and Syria (almost 80 years later), yet the similarities are wildly overblown since the 2006 Terrorism Act is about the prevention of potential terrorist acts in the UK.
Here are the main provisions of the 2006 Act and having read them carefully, I'm not sure what point George is trying to make, although I suppose that's the curse of being branded an intellectual, of being too clever by half.
Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he'd be guilty of terrorism
The International Brigades are acclaimed for bravery. But British citizens who fight in Syria are damned. If only they did it for the money
By George Monbiot
'The British government did threaten people leaving to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act. But the act was unworkable.' Photograph: Christopher Thomond
If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.
As it happens, the British government did threaten people leaving the country to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. In 1937 it warned that anyone volunteering to fight in Spain would be "liable on conviction to imprisonment up to two years". This was consistent with its policy of non-intervention, which even Winston Churchill, initially a supporter, came to see as "an elaborate system of official humbug". Britain, whose diplomatic service and military command were riddled with fascist sympathisers, helped to block munitions and support for the Republican government, while ignoring Italian and German deployments on Franco's side.
But the act was unworkable, and never used – unlike the Crown Prosecution Service's far graver threat to British citizens fighting in Syria. In January 16 people were arrested on terror charges after returning from Syria. Seven others are already awaiting trial. Sue Hemming, the CPS head of counter-terrorism, explained last week that "potentially it's an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict, however loathsome you think the people on the other side are ... We will apply the law robustly".
People fighting against forces that run a system of industrialised torture and murder and are systematically destroying entire communities could be banged up for life for their pains. Is this any fairer than imprisoning Orwell would have been?
I accept that some British fighters in Syria could be changed by their experience. I also accept that some are already motivated by the prospect of fighting a borderless jihad, and could return to Britain with the skills required to pursue it. But this is guilt by association. Some of those who go to fight in Syria might develop an interest in blowing up buses in Britain, just as some investment bankers might be tempted to launder cash for drug dealers and criminal gangs. We don't round up bankers on the grounds that their experience in one sector might tempt them to dabble in another. (The state won't prosecute them even when they do launder money for drug gangs and terrorists, as the HSBC scandal suggests.) But all those who leave Britain to fight in Syria potentially face terrorism charges, even if they seek only to defend their extended families.
Last week a British man who called himself Abu Suleiman al-Britani drove a truck full of explosives into the gate of Halab prison in Aleppo. The explosion, in which he died, allowed rebel fighters to swarm into the jail and release 300 prisoners. Was it terrorism or was it heroism? Terrorism, according to many commentators.
It's true that he carried out this act in the name of the al-Nusra Front, which the British government treats as synonymous with al-Qaida. But can anyone claim that liberating the inmates of Syrian government prisons is not a good thing? We now know that at least 11,000 people have been killed in these places, and that many were tortured to death. Pictures of their corpses were smuggled out of Syria by the government photographer employed to record them. There are probably many more. That combination of horror and bureaucracy – doing unspeakable things then ensuring that they are properly documented – has powerful historical resonances. It haunts us with another horror, and the questions that still hang over the Allied effort in the second world war: how much was known, how much could have been done?
As no one else is now likely to act, and as the raid on the prison would probably have been impossible without the suicide bomb, should we not be celebrating this act of extraordinary courage? Had David Cameron not lost the intervention vote, and had al-Britani been fighting for the British army, he might have been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
When you think of the attempt by the British battalion in the Spanish civil war to defend a place they called "Suicide Hill", with the loss of 225 out of 600 men, do you see this as an act of terror – a suicide mission motivated by an extreme ideology – or as a valiant attempt to resist a terror campaign?
Sue Hemming claims it is "an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict", but that is not always true. You can be prosecuted if you possess a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" for getting involved, but not, strangely, if you possess a financial motive. Far from it: such motives are now eminently respectable. You can even obtain a City &Guilds qualification as a naval mercenary. Sorry, "maritime security operative". As long as you don't care whom you kill or why, you're exempt from the law.
I expect that's a relief to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary who now chairs parliament's intelligence and security committee, where he ramps up public fears about terrorism. For several years he was chairman of ArmorGroup, whose business was to go out and get involved in conflict. The absence of one word from the legislation – financial – ensures that he is seen as a scourge of terrorism, rather than an accomplice. The British fighters in Syria should ask their commanders to pay them, then claim they're only in it for the money. They would, it seems, then be immune from prosecution.
Talking of which, what clearer case could there be of the "use or threat of action ... designed to influence the government ... for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" than the war with Iraq? Tony Blair's ministers were, of course, protected by crown immunity, but could they have experienced no flicker of cognitive dissonance while preparing the 2006 act?
Whatever you might think of armed intervention in Syria, by states or citizens, Hemming's warning illustrates the arbitrary nature of our terrorism laws, the ring they throw around certain acts of violence while ignoring others, the risk that they will be used against brown and bearded people who present no threat. The non-intervention agreement of 1936 was not the last elaborate system of official humbug the British government devised.
A BRITISH teenager killed fighting alongside his brothers in Syria had “most probably” joined the ranks of al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in the country, according to his father.
Abdullah Deghayes, 18, is thought to have been killed by a sniper in a battle involving extremists from Jabhat al-Nusra and the forces of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader.
The fighting, which took place close to the Turkish border, was so fierce that it took five days to recover Abdullah’s body.
As new details emerged of Abdullah’s death, The Sunday Times has discovered that his father, Abubaker, had travelled to Syria several times.
When he returned to Britain from overseas last week, he was stopped by police at Gatwick airport and had his mobile phones taken away. They were not returned until three days later.
Abubaker Deghayes, of Brighton, East Sussex, described his son as a “martyr” and believes he died fighting for a “just cause”.
However, he insisted that Abdullah and his younger brother Jaffar, 16, had travelled to Syria in February without his consent and that he had tried to dissuade them from getting involved in armed conflict.
Their older brother, Amer, 20, had already entered the country to fight and was shot in the stomach during the same battle in which Abdullah was killed.
Yesterday Jaffar, who was unharmed and is believed to be the youngest British jihadist in Syria, changed his Facebook profile photo to an image of Abdullah’s corpse.
Asked which rebel faction his sons had joined, Deghayes said: “I’m not sure, but most probably Jabhat al-Nusra.”
The group, also known as al-Nusra Front, was involved in heavy clashes with Assad’s troops in late March at Kasab, a border crossing in northeast Syria, where Deghayes said his son had died.
Another Briton, Abdul Majid, 41, from Crawley, West Sussex, had carried out a suicide attack on a Syrian jail this year for al-Nusra Front.
On Friday Deghayes, 45, whose brother, Omar, was held as a terror suspect in Guantanamo Bay for five years and was then released without charge, posted a video on Facebook as a tribute to his son which appeared to celebrate the jihadists opposing Assad.
Deghayes denied that he was encouraging others to take up arms, claiming people were free to make a “personal choice” over whether to fight in Syria.
The grieving father is no stranger to the country and said he had travelled there “several times” since 2012 to deliver aid. “We have warehouses out there and have established a school,” he said.
Deghayes is a trustee of the Al-Quds mosque in Brighton where in 2006 he told an undercover Sunday Times reporter that Tony Blair was “a legitimate target”.
Deghayes said he had meant the former prime minister was a target to be brought down from government after taking Britain to war in Iraq. The Press Complaints Commission, the industry regulator, had rejected his complaint against the newspaper.
Last week Deghayes said he had flown to Turkey in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Abdullah from joining the fight in Syria. He later travelled to Libya, the country from which his family originally fled as refugees.
Abdullah Deghayes was probably fighting with Jabhat al-NusraOn his return to Britain last Monday he was stopped at the airport. “I was questioned by police and my phones were taken to be checked,” he said.When asked to elaborate, Deghayes said: “Is this a police investigation or [do] you want a story?” Sussex police refused to comment.
Abdullah was one of six siblings — five boys and a girl — who grew up in the UK. He was interested in engineering and was due to go to university next year. Friends said he had never mentioned Syria or shown signs of extremism.
Both Abdullah and his twin brother, Abdul, had been in trouble with police in the past although Deghayes said this was for “petty things”.
The Facebook musings of their younger brother, Jaffar, switch from those of a typical teenager — in one post he describes someone as a “tight ginger fat scav” — to the more political. One entry that he shared with friends states: “It seems the word ‘terrorism’ is only reserved for Muslims.”
Problem with Intellectuals (16 February 2014)
After reading this article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, I was left with the distinct impression that George approved of all the actions being taken to oust Bashar al Assad and his murderous regime from Syria - including the suicide attack on Halab prison in Aleppo.
But then I stopped and wondered to myself is the the same George Monbiot, a prominent supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, who opposed an limited military strike on the Syrian regime last year - which failed to win support in the House of Commons?
If so, I think we should be told because I'm confused as to what George Monbiot is on about as he appears to support the rebels in Syria who are fighting to oust President Assad while drawing no real distinction between the Free Syrian Army insurgents and those linked to al-Qaida such as the al-Nusra Front.
George asks us to consider whether the suicide bomber was really a hero rather than a terrorist, but the answer that lies not so much in the act of blowing up the prison gates as in what al-Qaida stands for - what kind of society al-Qaida wants to create, if peace ever comes to Syria.
I read about the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 the other week so Monbiot is far from being the first person to raise the link between civil war in Spain and Syria (almost 80 years later), yet the similarities are wildly overblown since the 2006 Terrorism Act is about the prevention of potential terrorist acts in the UK.
Here are the main provisions of the 2006 Act and having read them carefully, I'm not sure what point George is trying to make, although I suppose that's the curse of being branded an intellectual, of being too clever by half.
MAIN PROVISIONS
• Extends police powers to hold terrorist suspects from 14 days to 28 days without charge.
• Makes it a criminal offence to encourage terrorism by directly or indirectly inciting or encouraging others to commit acts of terrorism. This includes an offence of "glorification" of terror – people who "praise or celebrate" terrorism in a way that may encourage others to commit a terrorist act. The maximum penalty is seven years' imprisonment.
• Grants the home secretary greater powers to ban groups that glorify terrorism and to prevent proscribed organisations from using front organisations to continue operating.
• Creates new offences relating to the sale, loan, distribution or transmission of terrorist publications. These can be:
(a) publications that may indirectly or directly induce others to commit terrorist acts or
(b) information that could be useful in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism, eg a bomb-making manual.
• Creates new offences to allow the prosecution of anyone who gives or receives training in terrorist techniques and to allow the prosecution of those who attend terror training camps or are believed to be preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
• Amends the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to increase the possible jail term for refusal to provide an encryption key from two years to up to five years and amends the same act extend the maximum period that intercept warrants can be issued for.
• Extends terrorism stop and search powers to cover bays and estuaries, and to enable the police to search boats and other vessels.
• Creates new offences relating to making or possessing radioactive devices or material and amends the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act to make it a criminal offence to trespass on a nuclear site, punishable by imprisonment for up to 51 weeks.
• Sets out new procedures in preparing terrorist cases for trial
Since drafting this post I have since read that the British suicide bomber referred to by George Monbiot - Abu Soleiman al-Britani was a longstanding member of the banned Islamist group al-Mahajiroun and was questioned by the police during an investigation into a plot to bomb a shopping centre in Kent.
Now a man is innocent of a crime until proved guilty in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, but how coincidental is that - and how stupid does George Monbiot look for even raising the possibility that this poor chap (who had a wife and children) might be a hero.
Now a man is innocent of a crime until proved guilty in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, but how coincidental is that - and how stupid does George Monbiot look for even raising the possibility that this poor chap (who had a wife and children) might be a hero.
The International Brigades are acclaimed for bravery. But British citizens who fight in Syria are damned. If only they did it for the money
By George Monbiot
'The British government did threaten people leaving to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act. But the act was unworkable.' Photograph: Christopher Thomond
If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.
As it happens, the British government did threaten people leaving the country to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. In 1937 it warned that anyone volunteering to fight in Spain would be "liable on conviction to imprisonment up to two years". This was consistent with its policy of non-intervention, which even Winston Churchill, initially a supporter, came to see as "an elaborate system of official humbug". Britain, whose diplomatic service and military command were riddled with fascist sympathisers, helped to block munitions and support for the Republican government, while ignoring Italian and German deployments on Franco's side.
But the act was unworkable, and never used – unlike the Crown Prosecution Service's far graver threat to British citizens fighting in Syria. In January 16 people were arrested on terror charges after returning from Syria. Seven others are already awaiting trial. Sue Hemming, the CPS head of counter-terrorism, explained last week that "potentially it's an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict, however loathsome you think the people on the other side are ... We will apply the law robustly".
People fighting against forces that run a system of industrialised torture and murder and are systematically destroying entire communities could be banged up for life for their pains. Is this any fairer than imprisoning Orwell would have been?
I accept that some British fighters in Syria could be changed by their experience. I also accept that some are already motivated by the prospect of fighting a borderless jihad, and could return to Britain with the skills required to pursue it. But this is guilt by association. Some of those who go to fight in Syria might develop an interest in blowing up buses in Britain, just as some investment bankers might be tempted to launder cash for drug dealers and criminal gangs. We don't round up bankers on the grounds that their experience in one sector might tempt them to dabble in another. (The state won't prosecute them even when they do launder money for drug gangs and terrorists, as the HSBC scandal suggests.) But all those who leave Britain to fight in Syria potentially face terrorism charges, even if they seek only to defend their extended families.
Last week a British man who called himself Abu Suleiman al-Britani drove a truck full of explosives into the gate of Halab prison in Aleppo. The explosion, in which he died, allowed rebel fighters to swarm into the jail and release 300 prisoners. Was it terrorism or was it heroism? Terrorism, according to many commentators.
It's true that he carried out this act in the name of the al-Nusra Front, which the British government treats as synonymous with al-Qaida. But can anyone claim that liberating the inmates of Syrian government prisons is not a good thing? We now know that at least 11,000 people have been killed in these places, and that many were tortured to death. Pictures of their corpses were smuggled out of Syria by the government photographer employed to record them. There are probably many more. That combination of horror and bureaucracy – doing unspeakable things then ensuring that they are properly documented – has powerful historical resonances. It haunts us with another horror, and the questions that still hang over the Allied effort in the second world war: how much was known, how much could have been done?
As no one else is now likely to act, and as the raid on the prison would probably have been impossible without the suicide bomb, should we not be celebrating this act of extraordinary courage? Had David Cameron not lost the intervention vote, and had al-Britani been fighting for the British army, he might have been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
When you think of the attempt by the British battalion in the Spanish civil war to defend a place they called "Suicide Hill", with the loss of 225 out of 600 men, do you see this as an act of terror – a suicide mission motivated by an extreme ideology – or as a valiant attempt to resist a terror campaign?
Sue Hemming claims it is "an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict", but that is not always true. You can be prosecuted if you possess a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" for getting involved, but not, strangely, if you possess a financial motive. Far from it: such motives are now eminently respectable. You can even obtain a City &Guilds qualification as a naval mercenary. Sorry, "maritime security operative". As long as you don't care whom you kill or why, you're exempt from the law.
I expect that's a relief to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary who now chairs parliament's intelligence and security committee, where he ramps up public fears about terrorism. For several years he was chairman of ArmorGroup, whose business was to go out and get involved in conflict. The absence of one word from the legislation – financial – ensures that he is seen as a scourge of terrorism, rather than an accomplice. The British fighters in Syria should ask their commanders to pay them, then claim they're only in it for the money. They would, it seems, then be immune from prosecution.
Talking of which, what clearer case could there be of the "use or threat of action ... designed to influence the government ... for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" than the war with Iraq? Tony Blair's ministers were, of course, protected by crown immunity, but could they have experienced no flicker of cognitive dissonance while preparing the 2006 act?
Whatever you might think of armed intervention in Syria, by states or citizens, Hemming's warning illustrates the arbitrary nature of our terrorism laws, the ring they throw around certain acts of violence while ignoring others, the risk that they will be used against brown and bearded people who present no threat. The non-intervention agreement of 1936 was not the last elaborate system of official humbug the British government devised.
