Students Downloading Jihadist Material Acquitted

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Five UK students who were charged under the UK's 2000 Terrorism Act for possession of jihadist materials were acquitted after the jury found that, while they had downloaded the materials, there was no evidence that they were planning any sort of crime. The Lord Chief Justice was quoted as saying, 'Difficult questions of interpretation have been raised in this case by the attempt by the prosecution to use [this law] for a purpose for which it was not intended.'"

Comments

Re:Well, they are just students, after all.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Young campus radicals like your former self formed the Weather Underground, SLA, RAF, and other terrorist groups. These actually did shoot people, rob banks, and blow up buildings. And these were in the tame days of the 70s, when you had to give people bomb instructions by hand, or photocopy.

Reading jihadist materials from the internet is one of the ways that ordinary people become radicals. I'm sure your "information wants to be free" types will be out here defending it, but let's be honest, your average Muhammad isn't going to build his own bomb so he can ride the subway without reading instructions on how to do so. Racist skinheads also use online materials to self-radicalize, and I bet that nobody here would be against coming down hard on them.

Examples of people making the jump from online materials to radical Islam are the two leading members of the cell responsible for the July 7, 2005, London bombings -- Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer. Both had life-changing experiences through their exposure to online materials, though by 2001 the men had left the Tablighi mosque they had been attending in the British city of Beeston, because they found it to be too apolitical. They apparently were frustrated by the mosque's elders, who forbid the discussion of politics in the mosque.

After Khan and Tanweer left the Tablighi mosque, they began attending the smaller Iqra Learning Center bookstore in Beeston, where they reportedly were exposed to frequent political discussions about places such as Iraq, Kashmir and Chechnya. The store's proprietors reportedly even produced jihad videos depicting crimes by the West against the Muslim world. Exposed to this environment, the two men eventually became radicalized to the point of traveling to Pakistan to attend a terrorist training camp and then returning to the United Kingdom to plan and execute a suicide attack that resulted in the death of them both.

Re:Well, they are just students, after all.

[stonertom]

We even still have the freedom to criticize presidents. Without getting killed. Not if they can help it.