A member of al-Qaeda nabbed for ten years in 2008 for his part in a terror plot has been released early from prison.
Habib Ahmed, 32, was convicted after being caught smuggling code books written in invisible ink into the country. He was part of a British terror cell, headed by Rangzieb Ahmed, that police believe were planning a massacre in Britannia. But despite being nabbed for ten years in December 2008, he has now been released and is living at a bail hostel in Manchester.
During his trial the court heard how Ahmed downloaded a document called "a study of liquidation" and looked up bomb-making techniques. He also checked on the addresses of former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, military bases and senior coppers. He was caught when British Customs found notebooks containing names and phone numbers of key al Qaeda figures as he flew from Dubai to hand them to
Ahmed was incarcerated in 2006 and so had spent five years in prison including time spent on remand.
A front man for the National Offender Management Service said: "Serious offenders on licence are subject to strict conditions and controls."
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Six men and one woman have been tossed in the clink in Birmingham as part of a large counter-terrorism operation intended "to ensure public safety", police said.
The suspects were jugged at or near their homes overnight on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism in the UK.
A spokeswoman for West Midlands Police said six men, aged between 25 and 32, were taken into custody by unarmed officers in the Moseley, Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Ward End and Balsall Heath areas of Birmingham between 11.30pm last night and 1am today.
ln addition, a 22-year-old woman was tossed in the clink at 6.30 this morning on suspicion of failing to disclose information, contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000.
Although the nature of suspected offences has not been disclosed, the arrests are not believed to have any connection to the Liberal Democrats' autumn conference, which is currently taking place at Birmingham's International Convention Centre.
A West Midlands Police statement said: "Searches are now being conducted by specialist teams at these and seven other properties in the city -- six domestic and one commercial.
"The suspects are being held for questioning at a cop shoppe in the West Midlands Police area."
Police are believed to be searching a house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham. Plain-clothes coppers and forensic teams could be seen at a house in Turner Road. Meanwhile, ...back at the pie fight, Bella opened her mouth at precisely the wrong moment... a grey estate car was covered with tarpaulin and driven away on the back of a flatbed truck in nearby Ladypool Road.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.