03 August 2017•Update: 03 August 2017
By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON
A British court on Thursday handed down life sentences to four men convicted of plotting to attack police or military targets.
The men were arrested in various English locations in August 2016 when officers found weapons and a partially constructed pipe bomb after months of surveillance.
Naweed Ali, 29, and Khobaib Hussain, 25, both from Birmingham, and Mohibur Rahman, 33, from Stoke-on-Trent, had planned a "mass casualty attack", according to prosecutors. The trio had dubbed themselves the 'Three Musketeers' in encrypted communications intercepted by the security forces.
Thirty-eight-year-old Tahir Aziz, who is from Stoke, was also charged with planning a terror attack.
The judge said the men were gripped by a "long-standing, radical, violent ideology".
Ali, Hussain and Rahman previously served jail terms for terror-related offenses and were sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison. Aziz received a minimum 15-year term.
The men were arrested on Aug. 26 last year when a bag of weapons, including a pipe bomb, an air pistol and a meat cleaver were found in Ali’s car. In Aziz’s car, police also found a samurai sword.
The court heard the group had planned to murder police or military figures and might have also planned to use their vehicles as weapons after being inspired by the July 2016 Nice terrorist attack in France.
British police have raised their efforts to prevent terror-related planning amid attacks in London and Manchester which left dozens of people dead this year.
