UK hands out life term to Pak-born Taliban recruiter

LONDON: A British court on Friday sentenced a 54-year-old Pakistan-born man to life imprisonment for recruiting volunteers in the United Kingdom to go to Afghanistan to kill British soldiers.

A Manchester court found Munir Farooqi guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism and three counts of soliciting murder and distributing terrorist literature. "You are in my judgment a very dangerous man, an extremist, a fundamentalist with a determination to fight abroad,'' said the judge.

The bald, bearded fanatic had an email address 'osamawanabe', recruited and brainwashed susceptible young men before persuading them to travel to training camps and battlefields in Afghanistan to combat the western coalition including British forces.

His cold-blooded message was: "Fight, kill and die."

Two other men - Israr Malik (23) and Matthew Newton (29) - were convicted with Farooqi. The three were caught in a police sting operation wherein two undercover officers infiltrated their plot. Both were found guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism. Malik was also found guilty on two counts of soliciting murder, while Newton was convicted on two counts of disseminating terrorist publications. They will serve a minimum of five and six years in prison.

The group used religious stalls in Manchester's city centre to convert people to Islam prior to radicalizing them by feeding terrorist texts, CDs and DVDs. In effect, they would be groomed to carry out terror acts. The two plain-clothed officers, using aliases of "Simon" and "Ray", penetrated the plotters more than a year back, winning the trust of their leader Farooqi.