Teacher ‘groomed pupils to join terror attacks on Big Ben and royal guards’
A TEACHER groomed boys as young as 11 to join his ‘death squad’ as he planned terror attacks on targets including Big Ben, a court heard yesterday.
Umar Haque, 25, is accused of showing children horrific videos of beheadings and making them practise knifing police officers.
Role-play exercises also allegedly included teaching youngsters to plant bombs and become ‘martyrs’. The alleged Islamic State fanatic is accused of planning to launch attacks with knives, guns or a car bomb on a range of London targets including Parliament, Heathrow, shopping centres and the troops who protect royal palaces.
Haque also talked about attacking Right-wing groups such as the English Defence League, it was claimed.
The Old Bailey heard he taught boys aged 11 to 16 at the Lantern of Knowledge Islamic Boys Secondary School in Leyton, East London, between 2015 and 2016. He also taught evening classes at a mosque in nearby Barking.
Jurors were told that Haque called himself a ‘death squad sent by Allah’ and is alleged to have prepared youngsters for terror acts with physical training – ordering them to do push-ups, races and grapple with each other.
Children were told to play the roles of police and attackers in scenarios with weapons and a car bomb, referring to their imagined victims as ‘Christians’ and ‘Americans’ while their tutor shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (‘God is great’), it was claimed. The court heard that Haque was ‘fascinated’ by the Westminster terror attack in March last year and promised his students they would also be able to take action.
He claimed to be in contact with IS and said the group fought ‘because the Queen and the Prime Minister had begun bombing them first’, the court heard.
Five days before his arrest, Haque is said to have staged a role-playing exercise with the children in a tent behind the mosque, showing them how to kill police officers.
Mark Heywood QC, prosecuting, said: ‘He said some of the martyrs would die because the police would kill them. He was showing them what to do if they joined him.’ Pupils were also allegedly told to demonstrate using imaginary knives, taking inspiration from videos Haque had shown of beheadings and fighting in Syria. Jurors heard the children were told ‘whatever they spoke about in the mosque must stay in the mosque,’ and if they told their parents, they would go to hell and their homes would burn down.
He was ‘manipulating and playing to their vulnerability’, said Mr Heywood. He said Haque enlisted the help of other extremists at the mosque, but he was already under secret surveillance by the security services after he tried to travel to Turkey in 2016. Last April he was recorded chanting in his car: ‘We gonna kill so many...’
Following his arrest on May 17 last year, police found he had watched bomb-making videos on YouTube and discovered a large kitchen knife wrapped in newspaper in his car.
Three other men also face charges. Abuthaher Mamun, 19, is accused of helping to finance the attack and discussed using Bitcoins. Nadeem Patel, 26, is accused of providing firearms. A fourth plotter, Muhammad Abid, 27, is accused of failing to tell the authorities about the attack after Haque confided in him: ‘We are a death squad sent by Allah.’
All four defendants, from East London, deny the charges. Patel also admits possessing a gun.
The trial continues.
‘Death squad sent by Allah’