Six to be sentenced for EDL rally attack plot
The young men convicted of plotting to attack an EDL march were "amateurish" and "showed a lack of determination", the Old Bailey has been told.
A barrister speaking on behalf of Omar Khan said that "if they had been determined they would have turned up on time", referring to the fact that the men arrived in Dewsbury after the march had finished.
The court also heard that this was a crime driven by the belief amongst some young Muslims that the police did not take the threat posed by right wing extremists such as the English Defence League seriously enough.
As part of the mitigation offered to the court, it was suggested that although this came under the "broad heading of terrorism", it was really a domestic criminal matter. He said this was violence planned by one group of young British men against another group of young British men, rather than a crime motivated by Jihadist ideology.
Six men from Birmingham, Omar Khan, Jewel Uddin, Mohammed Saud, Anzal Hussain, Mohammed Hasseen and Zohaib Ahmed, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack.
Yesterday the prosecution told the court that their plot to blow up the EDL rally would have sparked a "tit-for-tat spiral of violence and terror." They were armed with an arsenal of weapons and explosives when they were stopped on the motorway.
When their car was impounded and the boot checked police recovered knives, guns, explosive devices made from fireworks packed with nails and home made pipe bombs.
The judge is expected to pass sentence later this afternoon.