On honeymoon in the sunshine, Britons who forged a terror plot together
SMILING for the camera, they look like typical newlyweds enjoying a boat trip during their honeymoon.
But within weeks Shasta Khan, 38, and her husband Mohammed, 33, ditched their Westernised life- style and became terrorists intent on plotting to murder members of the Jewish community on British soil.
A court heard the couple planned to use chapati flour, bleach and Christmas tree lights to make a home-made bomb and carried out reconnaissance for targets.
Their activities were discovered only by chance when police were called to a domestic disturbance at their terraced home in Oldham.
Officers who searched the property discovered propaganda glorifying Osama Bin Laden, guides to bomb-making and a video from 2004 of British hostage Ken Bigley being beheaded in Iraq.
Yesterday British-born Mrs Khan, who has an 18-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, screamed and wept as she was convicted of engaging in preparation for terrorism and two counts of possessing information useful for terrorism.
She was cleared of a third count of the latter charge. Her husband had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to preparation for acts of terrorism. Both will be sentenced today.
Manchester Crown Court heard Mrs Khan, who ran a hair salon, met her husband on the ‘Single Muslim’ dating site in July 2010 after turning to religion following the breakdown of her two previous marriages.
She agreed to marry him just three days after they met and they enjoyed a honeymoon in Turkey, but within weeks she got rid of her Westernised clothes and stopped watching TV soaps, which he claimed were a ‘ bad influence’. Instead, the couple tuned into Al Qaeda inspired propaganda online.
Bobbie Cheema, prosecuting, said behind their ‘apparent normality of daily life’, unemployed car valeter Khan and his wife were planning an attack, with the most likely target being an orthodox Jewish area of Prestwich, North Manchester.
But their plans were stopped in July last year, when police were called to the couple’s home following a family row during which Khan attacked his father-in-law.
While officers were in attendance, one of Mrs Khan’s brothers told police: ‘We have something I think may be interesting to you. I think he’s a homegrown terrorist.’
Mrs Khan agreed to ‘spill the beans’ about her husband’s activities, but evidence later came to light which proved they were both in on the plans and she too was arrested and charged.
Among the items found by police was an article from an Al Qaeda magazine, entitled ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom’, which also offered a step-by- step guide on how to create an explosive capable of killing ‘at least ten people’.
Mrs Khan told the jury her husband was a ‘racist’, who said she did not believe in Allah because she mixed with white people.
But the jury rejected Mrs Khan’s version of events and agreed with the prosecution case that both were acting together.