Bricklayer who tried to join ISIS after training for terror at a paintballing centre jailed for nine years
AN apprentice bricklayer who tried to join ISIS in Syria after training for battle at a paintballing centre has been jailed for nine years.
Humza Ali was refused entry to Turkey in January 2015 after flying to Istanbul via Dublin.
A three-week trial which ended in December heard that Ali, of Ward End, Birmingham, was covertly recorded in December 2013 as he vowed to "fight until I die" for ISIS.
He was convicted of travelling for terrorist purposes and disseminating numerous video messages to other men, showing beheadings and atrocities carried out by ISIS.
The court heard Ali had trained for battle at a Birmingham based paintaball centre in Cut Throat Lane.
Judge Wall told Birmingham Crown Court: "You made a sustained and determined effort to go to Syria to fight for Isis. The fact that you did not achieve your plan was not due to a change of heart by you but to the alertness of the authorities who prevented you from getting there.
"You went into this with your eyes fully open."
Ali will serve an extended five-year licence period once he is released from prison.
Previous pictures show Ali - along with four Brit men with links to ISIS - learning to shoot weapons at the paintball range.
The men chose the activity, more suited to a stag do than a Jihadi, because shooting at a "gun club might draw unwanted attention".
Ali posed for "promotional" photos with Mohammed Ali Ahmed, Gabriel Rasmus and Abdelatif Gaini, also linked to the terror group, at a paintballing centre in Solihull months before border staff in Turkey sent him back to Britain.
The pictures show the 20-year-old man with other Birmingham men making the single-fingered salute of ISIS.
Ahmed, who is seen smiling on the "bonding" session, was jailed earlier this week for his part in handing £3,000 to Brussels "man in the hat" bombing suspect Mohamed Abrini.
The trial also heard that pictures recovered from Ali's phone showed him with would-be jihadist Rasmus, posing beside a tank at Delta Force paintballing in Cut Throat Lane, Hockley Heath, in June 2014.
Gaini, who is thought to be in Syria, is seen crouching near a military vehicle in one of the pictures.
Ali - a student at Birmingham's South and City College who lived with his parents - told jurors he had no intention of travelling to Syria when he made his way by sea and air routes to Istanbul via Ireland in January 2015.
Ali was also found guilty of sending malicious communications after directing "abusive" anti-democracy messages at a local councillor.
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During Ali's trial, prosecutor Anne Whyte QC said the paintballing photos were proof that Ali was preparing for terrorist acts.
She said: "If you step back you will understand that for an inexperienced but committed young man like Humza Ali, who intends to leave his Western urban life for war in the Middle East, the opportunities for handling anything remotely resembling a type of firearm are extremely limited.
"Membership, for example, of a gun club might draw unwanted attention, but the occasional paintballing session with friends is ideal, however bizarre that may seem, and at least enables the participant to handle a type of weapon and to take broad aim.
"Should you be in any doubt about the serious intent behind this activity in June 2014, you will be able to consider evidence which we say demonstrates that this was in fact a sort of training exercise, and of itself an act of preparation.
"During it, the participants posed for photographs in quasi-combat gear, holding their paint-filled weapons, including Ali.
"They were able to use the occasion to take a sort of promotional photo sealing their common sense of identity.
"It was a bonding act of preparation between men of like mind and like intent. They were doing what passed, in their limited circumstances, for training.
"Three including Ali have been thwarted in their plans to get to Syria."
Ahmed paid for the paintballing exercise, added Ms Whyte, and told jurors that he had already pleaded guilty to an offence under the Terrorism Act.
Ahmed, 27, was jailed for eight years on Monday at London's Kingston Crown Court.
Contempt of Court Act restrictions in the case of Ahmed had prevented reporting of his presence at the paintballing centre and references to the fact that 41-year-old Gaini travelled to Syria.
Rasmus, 29, was jailed for four years at the Old Bailey last month after being arrested in April last year at Dover while en route to Syria to engage in terrorism.
Earlier this year it was revealed the first British woman convicted of joining ISIS received a £132,000 handout of taxpayers’ cash to help fight her case in court.
And a hospital boss and his wife were jailed for sending cash to a nephew fighting for IS.
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