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.