Accused said cash-for-terror claim was ‘storm in a teacup’

As a boy growing up in Dundee, James McLintock was raised a Catholic and attended Lawside Academy.

But it was while studying at Edinburgh University in the early 1980s that he embarked on the path that would see him fighting against communist Russians in Afghanistan and Serbs in Bosnia. However, it was not until 2001 that the former Dundee schoolboy earned himself the nickname the “Tartan Taliban”.

He was arrested on Christmas Eve at a checkpoint near Afghanistan’s border and held until he had been interrogated by intelligence services.

Eventually McLintock was released when it was proved that he had been working for a charity.

However, Wikileaks documents suggested that McLintock had links with Al Qaida leader Ali Muhammad Abdul Aziz al-Fahkri.

In 2016 he was placed on the US Treasury’s “specially designated global terrorist” list, which freezes any property he has within US jurisdiction and bans Americans from doing business with him.

McLintock and the Al Rahmah Welfare Organisation (RWO) were included in a report by LA financialintelligence firm the Camstoll Group on the use of social media by terrorism financiers and fundraisers for Al Qaida and Islamic State.

He described the cash-for-terror claim at the time as a “storm in a teacup”.