Teen gets 22 years in jail for beheading plot
Youth, 19, boasted he admired killers of soldier Lee Rigby
A TEENAGER who planned to behead a British soldier has been jailed for 22 years by a judge at the Old Bailey.
Brusthom Ziamani, 19, was arrested in an east London street in August last year carrying a 12in (30cm) knife and a hammer in a rucksack, having earlier researched the location of army cadet bases in the south east of the capital.
A court heard he had been planning to behead a British soldier inspired by the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
His Old Bailey trial heard that he “reverted” to Islam early last year and was arrested after he showed his ex-girlfriend weapons, described Fusilier Rigby’s killer Michael Adebolajo as a “legend” and told her he would “kill soldiers”.
A jury of seven women and four men convicted him of preparing an act of terrorism on or before August 20 last year after deliberating for a day and a half.
The court had heard that Zi- amani had fallen in with the Muslim group al-Muhajiroun – or ALM – who gave him money, clothes and a place to stay after he was kicked out of his home in Camberwell, south London.
He attended their talks in the basement of a halal sweet shop in Whitechapel and bought a black flag to take on their demonstrations.
After just months’ learning of the Muslim religion, he wrote on Facebook that he was “willing to die in the cause of Allah”.
At the time he was first arrested last June on an unrelated matter, police found a ripped-up letter in his jeans pocket in which he wrote about mounting an attack on a British soldier and expressed the desire to die a martyr.
But Ziamani denied he was planning a copycat terror atrocity like the murder of Fusilier Rigby.
Defending, his lawyer Naeem Mian told the jury that Ziamani could not be convicted for having “offensive” or “repulsive” views and there was no evidence that he had actually carried out any reconnaissance for a terror attack.
In his sentencing remarks, Judge Timothy Pontius told Ziamani: “A realistic and sensible assessment of the whole of the evidence leads inescapably to the conclusion that this defendant, had he not, by sheer good fortune, been spotted and stopped by the police on the street in east London, would have carried out the intention he had so graphically expressed to his ex-girlfriend just a few hours before.”