Couple who met online jailed for planning attacks on Britain

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Published Feb 22, 2018

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LONDON - A couple who met on a dating site

and began researching how to make homemade explosives and the

deadly poison ricin, were jailed on Thursday for plotting

Islamic State-inspired chemical and bomb attacks on Britain.

Munir Hassan Mohammed, 37, from Derby in central England,

was sentenced to life in prison, to serve at least 14 years

behind bars, and Rowaida El-Hassan, 33, was given a 12-year

sentence.

"These were dangerous, calculated individuals, intent on

causing harm to innocent people within our communities," said

Detective Chief Inspector Paul Greenwood.

Mohammed began sharing extremist material within weeks of

meeting Londoner El-Hassan, a qualified pharmacist, who in turn

helped him find information on making ricin.

When arrested, Mohammed already had two of the ingredients

needed to make the highly unstable TATP (acetone peroxide),

known as the "mother of Satan", which was used by a suicide

bomber in an attack on a pop concert at the Manchester Arena

last May, killing 22 children and adults.

Prosecutors said the couple had met on internet dating site,

singlemuslim.com.

"I am looking for a man I can vibe with on a spiritual and

intellectual level. Someone who can teach me new things and

inspire me," El-Hassan wrote on her dating profile.

She sent messages to him on the WhatsApp service with links

to websites on how to make ricin. He sent her back graphic

videos of IS beheadings, shootings and killings of prisoners

using explosives.

When police arrested him in December 2016, Mohammed, who

worked in a food factory making meals for supermarkets,

possessed instruction manuals on mobile phone detonators, ricin

and how to make explosives, prosecutors said.

He had also contacted an IS commander via Facebook and

offered to carry out a "lone actor" mission.

"We'll never know what Munir Mohammed’s target might have

been," said Chief Superintendent Jim Allen from Derbyshire

Police. "What we do know is that he had the intention to cause

serious harm to a large number of people."

Mohammed, who the BBC reported was Eritrean-born and had

come to Britain from Sudan as an asylum-seeker, and El-Hassan

were both found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism at

London's Old Bailey court last month. 

Reuters

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