Defence lawyers welcome terror ruling

Updated 23.46 Wed Feb 13 2008

Keywords: students, Muslim, Court of Appeal, terrorism

A ruling overturning terror convictions against five students has been hailed as a "landmark" by defence lawyers.

The young men, all British Muslims, were jailed last July for possessing extremist propaganda, but have now been freed by a three-judge Court of Appeal panel.

"This is a landmark judgment in a test case over the innocent possession of materials" - Saghir Hussein

Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik, Akber Butt and Awaab Iqbal were studying at Bradford University in northern England, while Mohammed Irfan Raja was an east London schoolboy.

The prosecution said the youths were all planning to go to Pakistan for training before going to fight jihad.

But the Court of Appeal panel, led by Lord Chief Justice Nicholas Phillips, said the jury should have been told that the men would only be guilty of a crime if it were proven that the material was intended to incite terrorist acts.

Usman Malik's solicitor, Saghir Hussein, said after the Court of Appeal ruling: "This is a landmark judgement in a test case over the innocent possession of materials, including books and speech, and the court has finally agreed that this is in no way connected to terrorism."

He said the ruling would have implications for other cases, such as those "alleging the glorification of terrorism."

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mr Zafar, said the judgement had made it absolutely clear that possession of material must be for intent to use it unlawfully.

Asked if the judgement might send out the wrong message, Mr Khan said: "There will always be people out there with wrong intentions, but we must not criminalise people for simply looking at material, whether it is good or bad."

He said the Government should look carefully at the judgement and reconsider the current legislation.

"This is a good judgement for the Muslim community and the community at large," he said.

Raja, now 20, of Ilford, east London, Iqbal, 20, of Bradford, Zafar, 21, of Rochdale, Lancashire, Malik, 22, of Bradford, and Butt, 21, of Southall, west London, were all present in court for the ruling.