Extremist targeted Heathrow
MAN TRAINED STUDENTS AT MOSQUE TO ATTACK POLICE OFFICERS AT AIRPORT
A RELIGIOUS extremist who trained students at a mosque in Barking to attack police officers planned to target Westfield and Heathrow Airport.
Umar Ahmed Haque was in the early stages of planning a multi-faceted attack which would also have targeted Parliament Square, in Westminster, foreign embassies and banks in the City of London.
Haque, who worked with boys aged 11 to 14 at Essex Islamic Academy, was attempting to radicalise 55 children to help carry out the attacks.
He was attempting to recruit the “death squad” of young boys by showing them extreme videos and making them reenact knife attacks on police during roleplay exercises.
Haque, 25, of east London, was arrested in May 2017 after MI5 assisted the Met’s Counter Terrorism command.
He was convicted on Friday March 2 of two counts of preparation of terrorist acts and one count of collection of information useful to terrorism.
He had already pleaded guilty to one count of dissemination of terrorist publications and three counts of collection of information useful to terrorism.
At the time of his arrest, police found a large knife stashed away in his Ford Focus, the Old Bailey heard.
Haque boasted to the children about his links to ISIS and made them take an oath of secrecy, saying “whatever they spoke about in the mosque must stay in the mosque”.
He warned them if they mentioned it outside they would “suffer after death” and go to hell, or their homes would burn down.
He staged roleplay sessions with scenarios involving weapons, a car bomb and attacks on police, Christians and Americans and said they would buy vans in the future.
Just five days before his arrest, he showed children how to kill police officers and said some of the martyrs Umar Ahmed Haque
would die. Prosecutors believe Haque was planning for the attacks to be carried out at more than 30 London landmarks, businesses and attractions in a couple of years, once he could recruit enough people to carry out the ambitious attack.
In a telephone conversation with his friend Muhammad Abid monitored by police, Haque had glorified the actions of the London Bridge terror attackers.
Haque had told Abid: “We’re here to cause terrorism, my brother.
“We are a death squad sent by Allah and his messengers to avenge my Arab brothers’ blood.”
Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: “Haque was a dangerous man who was inspired by attacks in Europe and Westminster.
“He wanted to orchestrate numerous attacks at once, using guns, knives, bombs and large cars to kill innocent people.”
The mosque administrator had been known to counter-terror police after he had attempted to fly from Heathrow Airport to Turkey in April 2016.
Although there was no evidence to charge him, his phone contained searches for terrorist attacks and executions and his passport was revoked by the Home Office.
Abid, 27, also of east London, acted as Haque’s confidante as the plan was being developed, but made no attempt to report him and was found guilty of one count of having information about acts of terrorism.
In a five-hour phone conversation between the friends, Haque told Abid that he believed the public should be “annihilated” and that he had already radicalised 16 children at the mosque in Barking. The children were given safeguarding support, and 35 of them have been assessed as requiring longer-term support.
Another friend of Haque, 19-yearold Abuthaher Mamun, also of east London, was found guilty by the jury of one count of preparation of terrorist acts.
Mamun agreed to help raise funds for the attack by investing £900 into online trading companies with the hopes to afford a vehicle and to pay for motor insurance.
A fourth Man, Haque’s neighbour Nadeem Patel, 26, was found to have an illegal Walther P99 handgun at his home in Forest Gate. He was given a 16-month sentence for possession of a prohibited weapon but was not prosecuted for terror related offences.