Terror suspect in court (From Harrow Times)

Terror suspect in court

4:12pm Wednesday 30th May 2007 in

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AN ISLAMIC religious leader and his wife flew into the UK with missile blueprints and bomb recipes to be used against the West, a court heard today (Wed).

Harrow student Yassin Nassari, 28, was caught carrying instructions to build the same rockets used by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas as well as a chilling library of extreme Islamic documents, jurors heard.

The Old Bailey heard his wife, Bouchra El-Hor, 24, actively encouraged her husband to become a terrorist and had offered herself and the couple's five month old son for martyrdom.

Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee said: "It is the prosecution's case they are not merely radicalised Muslims but that Nassari was going to engage in what he and others like him would call a 'jihad' but what the law describes as terrorism.

"He possessed both the ideology and the technology with which that could be achieved either by him or by some other like-minded people.

"His wife was not only aware of his intention, but positively encouraged it - despite that fact that his actions would almost certainly result in his death in some form of combat.

"These are mindsets which are beyond ordinary understanding and which possess a chilling resilience."

Nassari and El-Hor were stopped coming into Luton airport on an easyJet flight from Amsterdam on May 13 last year.

A hard drive belonging to Nassari was seized and police found it contained detailed instructions to build Al Qassam rockets and explosives and hate-filled lectures from radical Islamic clerics.

Nassari started a science degree at Westminster University in 2001 but disappeared between 2002 and 2003.

Although previously described as "friendly , thoughtful and wearing western clothes" the court heard he returned to university a changed man.

Mr Jafferjee said: "He was now sporting long robes and wearing head-wear. He claimed he was the religious leader of the Islamic Society at the University's campus in Harrow.

"To put it bluntly he was now radicalised. His decision to die is his right. His decision to injure or kill is not. Nor in law is it defensible for his wife to withhold information she plainly possessed."

Nassar, of Ealing, denies possessing an article for the purposes of terrorism and possession of a document of record likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

El-Hor, also from Ealing, denies failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism.