A man who planned terror attacks against Muslims and mosques in Aberdeen has been jailed for life.

At the High Court in Glasgow judge Lord Burns told Connor Ward, 25, from Banff, Aberdeenshire, that he must serve at least six years before he is eligible for parole.

Ward, who was caught with a terrifying arms cache and bomb making equipment kept a list of mosques and pledged the “demise” of Islam.

Lord Burns told him: “The jury found you guilty and must have been satisfied you were in the course of preparing acts of terrorism.

“The jury’s view was that you formed an intention to attack a Mosque or Mosques in Aberdeen and would have acted alone. You had reached the stage of identifying your targets and expressed threats against Muslims.”

Lord Burns said that if Ward had carried out the acts of terrorism “It would have had catastrophic results.”

The judge added: “You had reached the stage of buying materials and you planned to cause serious injury at the least. Your obsession with weapons and explosives and your extreme right-wing attitudes presents serious risk to the public.”

It will be up to the parole board to decide when, or if, he is released.

Ward showed no emotion as he was led away to begin his sentence.

Police who searched his Banff, Aberdeenshire, home found hundreds of ball bearings, which could be used in pipe bombs, and rocket tubes capable of firing projectiles.

A stun gun, hundreds of knuckle dusters, knives and metal bars and deactivated bullets were also discovered.

Horrified officers discovered the lethal hoard after receiving a tip-off that Ward had broken strict firearms legislation by buying a stun gun from abroad.

They also found Ward had acquired a mobile phone signal jamming device and a machine for picking up hidden bugs and downloaded tens of thousands of documents from the internet on firearms and survival techniques.

The files also contained extreme right-wing propaganda and documents about military tactics.

A map showing the addresses of five Mosques in the Aberdeen area were discovered on Ward’s computer.

They also found that Ward, who told jurors he thought Hitler had made mistakes, had started to compile a book called “Combat 18 British Mosque Address Book.”

Combat 18 is the name of an extreme British right-wing paramilitary group

On the title page of the book, Ward had written : “This book is dedicated to all that follow Mohammed and the Islamic faith. You will all soon suffer your demise.”

Ward, a former psychiatric patient, claimed he was suffering from mental illness at the time

He said he believed the world was going to end in 2012 and he wanted to survive the apocalypse.

But jurors did not believe him and returned guilty verdicts on two charges of breaching the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Terrorism Act 2006 between February 26, 2011, and November 21, 2014.

Ward was jailed for three years in October 30, 2012, on a charge of contravening the 1883 explosives act by collecting the chemical components of a bomb with the intention of harming his father

He also received a 22 month jail sentence in April 2015 for possessing a stun gun.

Ward was also convicted in July 2016 of having an “improvised” knife while in jail and given an 18-month sentence.

Speaking last month, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerry Mclean, Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism Unit, said: “Although he operated alone, the weapons, manuals and downloads he possessed had the potential to cause serious harm.

“While we may never know the full extent of Ward’s intentions thanks to the early intervention of police, we do know that we cannot underestimate the dangerous nature of any behaviour or activity linked to terrorism.” </s> A Neo-Nazi convicted of planning terror attacks against Muslims and mosques in Aberdeen has been jailed for life.

Connor Ward, from Banff, Aberdeenshire, was caught with a terrifying arms cache and bomb making equipment.

The 25-year-old also kept a list of mosques and pledged the 'demise' of Islam, heard the High Court in Glasgow.

After searching his home police found hundreds of ball bearings, which could be used in pipe bombs, and rocket tubes capable of firing projectiles.

A stun gun, hundreds of knuckle dusters, knives and metal bars and deactivated bullets were also discovered.

Judge Lord Burns told Ward: 'The jury found you guilty and must have been satisfied you were in the course of preparing acts of terrorism.

'The jury's view was that you formed an intention to attack a Mosque or Mosques in Aberdeen and would have acted alone. You had reached the stage of identifying your targets and expressed threats against Muslims.'

Lord Burns said that if Ward had carried out the acts of terrorism 'it would have had catastrophic results.'

The judge added: 'You had reached the stage of buying materials and you planned to cause serious injury at the least. Your obsession with weapons and explosives and your extreme right-wing attitudes presents serious risk to the public.'

Ward will have to serve at least six years before he is eligible for parole. It will be up to the parole board to decide when, or if, he is released.

Ward showed no emotion as he was led away to begin his sentence.

Horrified officers discovered Ward's lethal hoard after receiving a tip-off that he had broken strict firearms legislation by buying a stun gun from abroad.

They also found Ward had acquired a mobile phone signal jamming device and a machine for picking up hidden bugs and downloaded tens of thousands of documents from the internet on firearms and survival techniques.

The files also contained extreme right-wing propaganda and documents about military tactics.

A map showing the addresses of five Mosques in the Aberdeen area was discovered on Ward's computer.

They also found that Ward, who told jurors he thought Hitler had made mistakes, had started to compile a book called 'Combat 18 British Mosque Address Book.'

Combat 18 is the name of an extreme British right-wing paramilitary group

On the title page of the book, Ward had written : 'This book is dedicated to all that follow Mohammed and the Islamic faith. You will all soon suffer your demise.'

Ward, a former psychiatric patient, claimed he was suffering from mental illness at the time

He said he believed the world was going to end in 2012 and he wanted to survive the apocalypse.

But jurors did not believe him and returned guilty verdicts on two charges of breaching the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Terrorism Act 2006 between February 26, 2011, and November 21, 2014.

Ward was jailed for three years in October 30, 2012, on a charge of contravening the 1883 explosives act by collecting the chemical components of a bomb with the intention of harming his father

He also received a 22 month jail sentence in April 2015 for possessing a stun gun.

Ward was also convicted in July 2016 of having an 'improvised' knife while in jail and given an 18-month sentence.

Defence counsel Drew McKenzie said that Ward was a man with an interest in weapons and had been trying to sell weapons. He added that Ward had sent a stun gun to Amnesty International. </s> Ward had been jailed previously for possessing bullets and explosives

Ward, who was caught with a terrifying arms cache and bomb-making equipment, kept a list of mosques and pledged the “demise” of Islam.

Lord Burns told him: “The jury found you guilty and must have been satisfied you were in the course of preparing acts of terrorism.

“The jury’s view was that you formed an intention to attack a mosque or mosques in Aberdeen and would have acted alone. You had reached the stage of identifying your targets and expressed threats against Muslims.”

Lord Burns said that if Ward had carried out the acts of terrorism “it would have had catastrophic results”.

He added: “You had reached the stage of buying materials and you planned to cause serious injury at the least. </s> LONDON (AP) — A teenage Iraqi asylum-seeker who told police he had been trained by the Islamic State group has been sentenced to at least 34 years in prison for bombing a London subway train and injuring 51 people.

A judge gave 18-year-old Ahmed Hassan Friday a life sentence with a requirement that he serve a minimum term of 34 years. A jury last week convicted Hassan of attempted murder in the September 2017 attack.

Judge Charles Haddon-Cave called Hassan “a dangerous and devious individual” and said he plotted the subway bombing with “ruthless determination” while pretending to be a model asylum-seeker.

The homemade bomb he placed on a packed London Underground train only partially detonated at Parsons Green station. Prosecutors said there probably would have been fatalities if the device had functioned properly. </s> JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An Indonesian court has sentenced an Islamic militant to nine years in prison for masterminding a double suicide bombing that targeted police at a bus terminal in Jakarta.

The North Jakarta District Court ruled that Kiki Muhamad Iqbal had organized and incited others to launch suicide attacks through his jihadist sermons.

Iqbal was among six suspected militants who were arrested days after last year's attack, in which two bombers blew themselves up at a bus terminal in eastern Jakarta, killing three policemen and themselves. The attack also wounded 12 people, both police and civilians.

Iqbal was earlier convicted in 2011 of making bombs and sentenced to six years in prison after police discovered a bomb lab in West Java's Cibiru village. </s> LONDON (AP) — A man who drove into worshippers near a London mosque, killing one man and injuring a dozen others, was sentenced Friday to at least 43 years in prison for what a judge called a crime driven by “malevolent hatred.”

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Darren Osborne’s mind had been “poisoned” by far-right ideas, and he had shown no signs of remorse.

“Your mindset became one of malevolent hatred,” the judge told the prisoner in the dock at Woolwich Crown Court. “This was a terrorist attack. You intended to kill.”

She sentenced 48-year-old Osborne on Friday to life with no chance of parole for 43 years.

A jury convicted Osborne on Thursday of murder and attempted murder for the June 2017 attack in London’s Finsbury Park neighborhood.

A 51-year-old man, Makram Ali, was killed and 12 people were injured when Osborne drove a rented van into people leaving evening prayers during Ramadan.

Prosecutors said Osborne was motivated by a hatred of Muslims and had been radicalized by online far-right and Islamophobic propaganda.

Ali’s family watched from the public gallery as sentence was handed down.

The judge said the victim had “lived his life without enemies — until, unknowingly, he met you.”

Ali left a wife and six children. His daughter Ruzina Akhtar said in a statement read in court that “his life was taken in a cruel way by a very narrow-minded, heartless being.” </s> While high-level terror offences will continue to be met with a minimum 40-year jail term, lower-level offences will be now dealt with far more seriously. Terrorists caught in the early stages of a terror plot will no longer be let off with jail terms lasting just a few months, while those assisting terrorists even slightly will also be cracked down on. The changes have been introduced following the rise of "low-tech" attacks, such as those involving cars or knives which require little planning, in the UK. Three attacks involved vehicles last year, while knives were used in the Westminster and London Bridge atrocities. Today the UK’s Sentencing Council will publish the first comprehensive guidance on a number of terrorism offences for courts in England and Wales.

Sentencing Council Chairman Lord Justice Treacy said: "Terrorist offences are among the most serious that come before the courts. "Offending can include an extremist cell plotting a deadly attack on the public, someone trying to make a bomb or another recruiting for a terrorist organisation. "As well as the threat to people's lives, terrorist activity threatens the way our society operates. "These threats have evolved and we are ensuring that courts have comprehensive guidance to help them sentence offenders appropriately so they are properly punished and their activities are disrupted."

Other offences covered by the new guidelines include causing or attempting to cause an explosion, collecting or sharing extremist material, raising funds for terrorism, glorifying terrorist acts and joining or supporting a banned organisation. The new guidelines will keep the same maximum sentence of life with a minimum term of 40 years for section 5 cases. But the sentencing range for the lowest-level crimes will be set at three to six years - compared to 21 months to five years under the existing guidance. The Sentencing Council said it decided that "when considering these actions in the current climate, where a terrorist act could be planned in a very short time period, using readily available items such as vehicles as weapons, combined with online extremist material providing encouragement and inspiration, these lower-level offences are more serious than they have previously been perceived".

Work started on the plans in 2016 but they are being fast-tracked after Britain was hit by five attacks last year. Justice minister Rory Stewart said: "We're determined to keep communities safe by deterring and disrupting terror activity in every way we can. "We've already extended the scheme for appealing unduly lenient sentences to cover more terror offences, and these new guidelines will help ensure those who encourage, plot or carry out these horrifying crimes are properly punished." The guidelines come into force on April 27. </s> A court in London sentenced Dutch man Aweys S. to eight years in prison for terrorism. He was found guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism and planning to join terrorist organization ISIS in Syria, British newspapers Mail Online and Mirror report.

In 2013 S. left his family behind in Breda to move to London, where he got a job as a package deliverer, according to newspaper AD. In London he became radicalized, the British judiciary said in court. The Somali-born Dutch man made headlines in the United Kingdom when prosecutors revealed chat conversations he had with a man in Kenya in court. In these chats they talked about killing former Prime Minister James Cameron and Queen Elizabeth, and opening fire on football supporters and Jewish people.

The court did not convict him for these statements. "These conversations, although chilling, dangerous and testament to your increasing radicalization, were in my judgment more in the nature of fantasy than conspiracy", the judge told him, according to the Mirror. "I am not sentencing you, indeed cannot sentence you on this charge, for threatened acts of terrorism in this country."

The judge added: "Given the scope of your ambition, including your fantasies about the commission of very grave terrorist acts in the UK and your hatred for those who do not share your views, I have no hesitation in finding you dangerous."

S. was arrested at Stansted airport in London on May 24th last year, as he was preparing to board a flight to Turkey, from where he wanted to sneak across the border to Syria or Iraq, according to the Prosecutor.

"You can have no illusions about the nature of the fighters whose ranks you aspired to join, no illusions about their murderous behavior, their atrocities", the judge said, according to Mail Online. "But for your detention at Stansted you could have been within the heart of the area then controlled by so-called Islamic State within a few days."

The Dutch man was convicted for preparing acts of terrorism by applying for a loan, buying a one way ticket to Turkey, and going to the London airport to travel abroad and join a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. </s> LONDON -- A man who drove into worshippers near a London mosque, killing one man and injuring a dozen others, has been sentenced to at least 43 years in prison.

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Darren Osborne's mind had been "poisoned" by far-right ideas.

She sentenced the 48-year-old on Friday to life with no chance of parole for 43 years.

A jury convicted Osborne of murder and attempted murder on Thursday for the June 2017 attack in London's Finsbury Park neighborhood.

A 51-year-old man, Makram Ali, was killed and 12 people were injured when Osborne drove a rented van into people leaving evening prayers during Ramadan.

Prosecutors said Osborne was motivated by a hatred of Muslims and had been radicalized by online far-right and Islamophobic propaganda.
The High Court in Glasgow sentences Banff resident Connor Ward to life in prison with a minimum term of six years for plotting an anti-Islamic terror attack against mosques in Aberdeen.