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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2147956.ece

July 27, 2007

“I’m off to join soldiers of Islam – meet you in paradise, schoolboy told parents”
Russell Jenkins

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “A schoolboy who left his parents a farewell letter telling them that he was going to fight as a soldier of Islam and would meet them again in the “garden of paradise” was jailed yesterday for two years.

Mohammed Irfan Raja ran away from his home in Ilford, East London, in February last year hoping to join four Bradford University students determined to train as terrorists in Pakistan to fight British soldiers and die as martyrs.

Raja, who was then 17, urged his parents in the letter not to blame each other for failing to stop him but his resolve was weakened by a tearful telephone conversation in which his parents begged him to come home. He was arrested on his return after three days away and the rest of the members in the would-be terrorist cell were rounded up.

Yesterday he was ordered at the Old Bailey to serve two years in a young offender institution.

Four others – Aitzaz Zafar, 20, Usman Malik, 21, Akbar Butt, 20, and Awaab Iqbal, also 20, who had amassed a small library glorifying Islamic terrorism to persuade others to fight the holy war – were sentenced to serve between twenty-seven months and three years. All had been found guilty this week of possessing articles that could be used for terrorism.

Judge Peter Beaumont, the Recorder of London, said that they should be punished for being prepared to train in Pakistan and then fight in Afghanistan against British soldiers.”