JIHADIS’ £30K LEGAL BILL
A JIHADI gang jailed for planning a Lee Rigby-style atrocity got more than £30,000 of taxpayers’ cash to fight terror charges.
Naweed Ali, 29, Khobaib Hussain, 25, and Mohibur Rahman, 33, were caged for at least 20 years over the sickening plot.
Tahir Aziz was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years.
Three of the men called themselves the Three Musketeers on a messaging app they used for the plot. The West Midlands-based gang wanted to attack police or soldiers with weapons including a half-made pipe bomb and a knife but were caught in a MI5 sting. But a Freedom of Information request showed they were awarded more than £30,000 legal aid, despite three of them having previously been jailed for terror offences.
Former Primark worker Aziz was awarded £21,305, trainee gas fitter Hussain got £4,775, Ali racked up
£3,240 and Rahman bagged £804. During the Old Bailey trial jurors heard Aziz “plotted a terrorist attack using a Samurai sword he bought from a sex shop”.
He had already been jailed for five years in 2012 after being caught with bomb-making instructions. Ali and Hussain were also locked up in
2012 for attending a terror training camp in Pakistan.
News of the payout comes after families of the 1982 IRA Hyde Park bombing victims were refused legal aid earlier this year for an attempt to bring a private prosecution against a suspect.