A jihadi jailed with London Bridge attacker Usman Khan for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange once said he was “happy” to be labelled a terrorist, it emerged today.
In a filmed interview in 2010 for a BBC documentary, Mohammed Shahjahan said it “means nothing to me” to be described as a religious fundamentalist and advocated stoning adulterers.
Two years later, Shahjahan and Khan, both of Stoke-on-Trent, and seven others were jailed for planning to set up a jihadist training camp in Pakistan and carry out bomb attacks.
Another member of the group, Nazam Hussain, also of Stoke, was arrested on Sunday as the parole licences of convicted extremists were reviewed after Khan’s knife rampage on Friday left two people dead.
The interview with Shahjahan shines a light on the men’s radicalisation. In the video, he holds a sign reading “what happened to freedom of speech” before saying: “If they say that I’m a terrorist because I’m calling for my faith, then fair enough… If anything, it shows that I’m on the footstep of the prophet Mohammed, because he was called a terrorist, a fundamentalist as well.”
Shahjahan said that after the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001 he fell under the instruction of an unnamed “individual who knew a lot about Islam”, and decided to “study for at least six months with him, which I did.”
Shahjahan and Khan were said to have been “students” of Anjem Choudary, who was jailed in 2016 for encouraging people to join Islamic State. It is not clear if he is the man referred to in the video.
