Cleared over chip shop bomb plot, Iraqi who ‘just liked making fireworks’
AN IRAQI asylum seeker was yesterday convicted of planning a terror atrocity using a driverless car – but his alleged bombmaker accomplice was cleared during an extraordinary courtroom drama.
Barber Farhad Salah, 24, will be sentenced on July 24 after being found guilty of terror charges, but for the second successive trial, jurors could not decide whether chip shop owner Andy Star, 32, was a terrorist or someone with an innocent interest in making fireworks.
After 15 hours of deliberation, the jury failed to agree a majority verdict and Judge Paul Watson QC was forced to discharge them.
He then found Star not guilty of being involved in the bomb plot as the prosecution decided against attempting a
Viewed a wide range of extremist material
second retrial. But as Star was being led out of court by security staff, a female member of the jury shouted ‘terrorist’.
In a further twist, Star, a former Iraqi asylum seeker given indefinite leave to remain three years ago, was not allowed to walk free. The judge said there ‘may be an immigration problem’ and his lawyers are likely to face another legal battle over whether he will be allowed to stay in the UK.
Star and Salah faced the same charge of preparing to commit acts of terrorism and Salah was convicted by a majority of ten to two at the retrial. The original trial last year ended with the jury unable to agree verdicts on either man.
Sheffield Crown Court heard that Salah was living a double life, working as a barber in Sheffield as he plotted a terrorist attack in support of Islamic State. He was said to have teamed up with Star, a former counter-terrorist policeman in Iraq, who was accused of making improvised explosive devices from a makeshift bomb factory above the fish and chip shop he ran in Chesterfield.
Outlining his plan on social media, Salah wrote about making an ‘invention in the field of explosion’ and controlling a vehicle ‘with laptop and without a driver’. The prosecution claimed Salah and Star viewed a wide variety of extremist material, including a shocking IS propaganda film featuring scenes of torture and murder.
Police arrested both men in simultaneous raids six days before Christmas 2017, fearing an attack was imminent.
Star insisted there was nothing sinister about the explosive materials at his flat because he had a long-term interest in making fireworks. His former girlfriend Joanne Mallinson, 33, confirmed his hobby and said he was ‘genuinely shocked’ when he saw news reports of the Manchester Arena bombing. He told her: ‘Real Muslims would not do that.’
Star denied becoming an Islamic extremist, saying in court: ‘I wasn’t even religious. I was smoking, drinking, having girlfriends, all the things you can’t do as a Muslim.’ Outside court, Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Snowden, the head of the northeast counter terrorism unit, said Salah was a ‘dangerous’ man.
He added: ‘Salah posed a very real risk to the safety of our communities. We’re grateful we were able to disrupt his plans before he’d identified an opportunity to see them through.’