Jury shown dad’s posts on terrorism
Jurors in the trial of an engineer accused of encouraging acts of terrorism through his Facebook account have viewed shocking videos posted on his profile.
Abdulrahman Alcharbati made 400 different postings onto his news feed between January 24 and February 26 last year. A total of 110 of them referred to Islamic State or martyrdom, it is claimed.
Newcastle Crown Court heard the 32-year-old had been repeatedly warned that his “extremist” postings about the conflict in Syria contravened the social media site’s rules and had his account suspended on occasions.
The court heard, despite the bans, the married dad, who is originally from Syria but lives in Sunderland, posted six “terrorist publications” on his profile, which had 5,000 friends, in one day last February.
Prosecutors say the videos, which show men in military uniform being murdered, praise martyrs and promote suicide bombings, could “encourage the watcher to commit acts of terrorism”.
The court also heard after counter-terrorism police raided his home at Sunderland’s Noble Street, officers seized his phone and found a bomb-making manual titled”Easy Explosives”.
Alcharbati told police “I just posted the news” and is on trial accused of six offences of dissemination of a terrorist publication and one of possession of a document containing terrorist information, which he denies.
The multiple postings, which are mostly in Arabic but have been translated, contain repeated references to conflict and many of the videos and pictures show the Islamic State flag.
One 13-minute video, which prosecutors claim celebrates suicide operations, contains a song which appears to encourage attacks on non-believers of Islam.
Prosecutor Dan PawsonPounds has told jurors: “He said he condemned terrorism and posted material to discourage others from committing such acts, quite opposite to what the crown say his intention was.”
Alcharbati denies all charges against him.
The trial continues.