Two Men Found Sleeping In A Birmingham Mosque Are Jailed For Terror Offences

Two men, who were planning to travel to Iraq to engage in terrorism, have been jailed for a total of 10 years.

Aras Mohammed Hamid (left), aged 26, of no fixed address, was found guilty of two counts of preparing for acts of terrorism following trial at Kingston Crown Court in London. The court heard he had been pivotal in planning for himself and another defendant to travel to the conflict zone and engage in acts of terrorism.

Hamid was also convicted of having a false Bulgarian passport; he had pleaded guilty to this offence at an earlier hearing. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

Shivan Hayder Azeez Zangana, (also known as Aziz - middle) aged 21, from Washington Road, Sheffield, was convicted of one offence of preparing for acts of terrorism. He had been in contact with Hamid about going to Iraq, before travelling from Sheffield to Birmingham, where he was arrested by officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit (WMCTU).

Aziz had claimed that he wanted to go home to Iraq but evidence proved that he had in fact been radicalised by Hamid and his purpose for wanting to travel was to join Daesh. Aziz was jailed for three years.

A third man, Ahmad Ismail (right), aged 19, from Portwrinkle Avenue, Coventry, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about the planned travel to the conflict zone.

The investigation began, when a concerned relative of Aziz made a 999 call to police in South Yorkshire, claiming he had left his home in Sheffield and was planning to leave to join a terrorist organisation.

Following a police investigation, which discovered Aziz had travelled by train to Birmingham, officers arrested Aziz from a residential area above a mosque in Holyhead Road, Handsworth on 17 May 2016. Also at the Birmingham address was Hamid, a Kurdish asylum seeker, who had arrived in the country in September 2015.