How did quiet Walsall become a breeding ground for Jihadi fanatics fleeing to join ISIS?
Cell of ISIS supporters from the West Mids town were sentenced this week
AMID the cheery sellers of cheap fruit and veg and bargain tracksuits on offer in Walsall’s 800-year-old market, one stallholder ominously stood out.
Draped in flowing robes, bearded Ayman Shaukat, his rickety pitch laden with religious literature, failed to join in his fellow traders’ casual banter.
Yet he too was offering a deal — a one-way trip to the blood-drenched Syrian killing fields of IS.
And Shaukat, 28, a convicted burglar and Coventry University law graduate, proved an adept salesman.
Among those he helped flee to the terror fiefdom was the Muslim convert son of a vicar, who later perished there as a “soldier” of the so-called caliphate.
Incredibly, four pregnant women from Walsall also tried to make it to Syria to provide new recruits for the terror organisation.
Police said the women were urged to go in order to give birth inside IS territory.
Labelled the “Babies for IS” cell, it led to West Midlands Police warning that the terrorists were trying to lure women and children to add to their “infrastructure”.
This week “fixer” Shaukat was jailed for ten years for helping other fanatics reach Syria.
Three other cell members also received sentences at the Old Bailey on Monday, including two women caught up in the terror drive.
The sentences followed a 19-month operation by West Midlands Police.
And they have left many wondering how on earth low-key Walsall had become such an epicentre.
Local dad-of-one Paul Nickless, 55, runs a print design business just down the road from where Shaukat had a meeting house.
He said yesterday: “It’s a surprise when it happens so close to home. You expect it in London and Birmingham but Walsall is a sleepy town compared to the big cities.”
Chef and mum-of-one Nikki Kelly, 30, added: “I was completely shocked. It shows terrorists are everywhere.”
A former industrial town eight miles west of Birmingham, Walsall is the birthplace of Slade’s Noddy Holder and Corrie’s Sue Nicholls.
The borough has a population 269,323, including 20,000 peaceable Muslims.
Yet a handful of lost souls, with Shaukat as their facilitator, believed life would be more favourable among the cut-throats of IS.
Nobody has been brainwashed or tricked. I am training to be a soldier because the whole world is united against us.
Jake Petty
Shaukat, whose grandfather served with the British Army in India, claimed to help prevent extremism.
But venomous rants on his Facebook page told a different story.
After last year’s terror massacre of staff at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, he wrote he hoped the magazine’s editors would “rot in hell”.
He also described Home Secretary Theresa May as a “filthy woman” who should, again, “rot in hell”.
A picture of the firebrand posing in front of an IS-style flag in his bedroom was found on his phone.
In 2012 the Chelsea fan was among 15 young Muslim men, “disenfranchised” by life in West Midlands and the teachings in its mainstream mosques, who set up Islam Walsall.
Its HQ was on Bradford Lane, a nondescript suburban street.
Shaukat was treasurer and later vice-president of the group, which attracted some 40 others to its workshops.
He even once hosted a Christmas Day conference with associates of jailed hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza.
Yet Shaukat’s activities as a “terror travel agent” would only be uncovered by the bravery of Church of England vicar Reverend Sue Boyce.
Her son Jake Petty, 25, once a pupil at Walsall’s Blue Coat Church of England School, had converted to Islam at the age of 15.
One neighbour said there had been a lot of religious books in the family home and he picked up the Koran one day because he was “bored”.
Later, after studying Arabic at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, he went travelling.
In 2011 he was deported from Kenya with a Walsall pal, Sajid Aslam, 34 — an associate of Shaukat’s — after they were believed to be making for jihadi hotbed Somalia.
Giving evidence at the Old Bailey in February, Ms Boyce revealed that her son was “very good friends” with Aslam and used to play on an Xbox together.
In 2014 Jake, who had a twin brother and two sisters, set off travelling once more.
A tearful Ms Boyce told the court how she received an email from her son in October that year. Its subject line read “New life” and it revealed he had joined IS.
Jake wrote: “We aren't a load of backward, bloodthirsty terrorists, just normal people who want to live somewhere where religion is the most important issue.
“Nobody has been brainwashed or tricked, I am training to be a soldier because the whole world is united against us.”
His mother bravely contacted spy agency MI5 and gave it the email.
Using it, the spooks uncovered a web of jihadi fanaticism in Walsall with stallholder Shaukat at its centre, funnelling foot soldiers, their wives and children to the IS terrorists.
Jake would never return home.
His distraught mother identified his remains from video footage after he was killed fighting last year, soon after sending the email.
He had travelled through a Turkish frontier town to Syria, where he met his old Walsall friends Sajid Aslam and 24-year-old Isaiah Siadatan.
He is the younger half-brother of 2009 Apprentice winner Yasmina Siadatan.
Supply teacher Aslam had been driven to Stansted Airport by Shaukat in August 2014.
A week later he sent Shaukat a coded message to announce his safe arrival in Syria — a link to a video of a song called I Made It.
Shaukat replied: “Good stuff.” Aslam remains in Syria.
Aslam’s wife Lorna Moore, 34, a trainee maths teacher and Muslim convert brought up as a Protestant in Northern Ireland, would also launch a bid to reach IS.
The mum of three, who met Aslam in 2000, worked as a project manager for the National Childbirth Trust.
Last November the blonde, who wears a black niqab covering all but her eyes, pretended she was taking her family to Majorca on a two-week package holiday.
But a text to her from another Muslim convert’s wife in Turkey gave away Moore’s final destination by saying: “See you there.”
Moore told an Old Bailey jury that Aslam had controlled her for years. She said he would call her a “f***ing white b****”, and a “chav”.
She added: “He would grab me by the hair and put my face in the toilet and say ‘Does that look clean to you?’.
“He’s say if it was not for him I would be a ‘gori’ (an offensive name for a white person) on a council estate with a can of Carling and a cigarette and with five kids by five different fathers.”
This week she was jailed for two and a half years for failing to tell authorities her husband had gone to join IS in Syria.
She had also attempted to take her children — including an 11-month old baby — to the war zone.
Petty’s other friend, Siadatan, also had a Muslim convert bride he tried to lure to IS.
Then-pregnant Kerry Thomason, 24, even booked flights to Turkey for her and her two children in November 2014 but cops foiled the attempt and persuaded her to hand over their passports.
Siadatan then sent her an email saying: “’If you don’t bring my kids to the Islamic State I will send someone to kill you and I will send someone to kill your mum and dad.
“You have two weeks from today. Look, I love you but if you think I will let you bring up my kids in a Kafir (non Muslim) country you’re mistaken.”
Siadatan was killed in Syria in 2015, according to the BBC. Thomason pleaded guilty to assisting him prepare for acts of terrorism.
Judge Charles Wide described her as “naive” and suspended her two-year prison sentence.
Another Walsall couple helped by Shaukat were Muslim convert Alex Nash, 22, and Yousma Jan, 21.
Nash, who went to a Church of England school in the town, pleaded guilty to one count of preparing acts of terrorism but a charge against his wife was dropped.
Nash, who got as far as Turkey, was jailed for five years on Monday with a one-year additional licence.
Police say that in 2014 12 people from Walsall travelled to Syria or tried to do so.
Yet it was the presence of so many pregnant women and children that shocked observers.
Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale, head of West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, pointed out that “Isis is trying to attract women and families” because “they are trying to add to their infrastructure”.
The anti-terror cop also highlighted the misplaced zeal of new converts.
He added: “You get the vulnerability of the convert because they were not brought up with Islam when they were little.
“They do not have the same understanding of its range and depth.”
