A delivery driver from Luton has been jailed for life, with a minimum term of 12 years, for plotting to kill US personnel outside an air base in UK, reports BBC.
Junead Khan, 25, used his job to scout US bases for potential victims. He intended to stage a road accident outside the Lakenheath base and attack people who came to help, a court heard. Khan had also been found guilty, along with his uncle, Shazib Khan, 23, of preparing to go to Syria to join so-called Islamic State (IS). Shazib Khan, 23, was given a custodial sentence of eight years, with an extended period of five years on licence.
Junead Khan also exchanged online messages with an IS fighter in Syria. Prosecutors claimed the man Khan exchanged messages with, who used the name Abu Hussain, was British-born Junaid Hussain.
Hussain was killed in a US drone strike in the IS stronghold of Raqqa just weeks after his link with the planned UK attack was discovered.One message described an attack on military personnel, which they compared with the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013.
Sentencing Khan at London’s Kingston Crown Court, Mr Justice Edis said: “Junead Khan was not far from the commission of the murder to be committed by horrifying method in the street in order to create terror and terrorist propaganda in this country. “His offence was so serious that a life sentence must be imposed.”
Justice Edis said the two men, who are of Bangladeshi backgrounds, had rejected the values and opportunities Britain gave them. Police arrested Junead Khan last July and discovered pictures on his phone of him posing in his bedroom with an IS-style black flag later found in the attic. His computer was also found to contain an al-Qaeda bomb manual and Amazon searches for a large combat knife. Police officers had visited Khan as part of the national anti-extremism programme Prevent.
But the court heard Khan mocked the programme in a series of scathing WhatsApp messages.