Wrexham imam gets six years for role in illegal arms deal

A Libyan activist who secretly helped in a $28.5 million illegal arms deal while working as an imam in Wrexham has been jailed for six years.

Abdurraouf Eshati, 29, admitted his role in the plan to send a consignment of 1,100 tonnes of ammunition to Libya.

Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to possessing a document for terrorist purposes in December last year and seeking leave to remain in the United Kingdom by deception by falsely claiming he was at risk of persecution if returned to Libya.

The scheme was uncovered when he was found with 19 others hiding in the back of a lorry bound for France at the Port of Dover in Kent in November last year.

On his mobile phone police found an invoice from an arms dealer for the sale and delivery of ammunition to Tobruk in Libya.

Investigations in Italy revealed that Eshati had been caught up in a determined attempt to get arms into Libya in plain contravention of the UN embargo.

On his arrest, Eshati told police he had been in Britain since 2009 on a visa and later as an asylum seeker.

He said his father had been a senior figure in the Gaddafi regime and was now in prison in Tripoli while his two brothers had been murdered.

However, this was a false claim and it later emerged that his brother was alive and well while his father was recovering from gall bladder surgery in Tunisia.

Police raided two addresses linked with Eshati in Wrexham in December last year. Officers who went to a house in Sterling Avenue were told by the occupant that Eshati used it as a postal address only.

In his room at Wrexham Islamic Centre in Grosvenor Road, police found a number of letter headed documents which were blank apart from a stamp and signature. This was, the prosecution said, a forger's kit.

Earlier in mitigation, Abdul Iqbal QC said Eshati: "His background generally, especially when he lived in North Wales in the Wrexham area is set out by trustees of the mosque where he worked.

"Whether they thought he was an able imam or not so able, there is no evidence he uttered any words that supported violence directly and they expressed surprise as to his predicament having been arrested."