Delivery driver jailed for planning terror attack on US soldier in Britain

A British Islamic extremist has been jailed for life for planning a terror attack on American military personnel in the UK.

Junead Khan, 25, was a “committed supporter” of Islamic State and plotted to kill a soldier with a knife like the one used by Mohammed Emwazi, the notorious Isis extremist known as “Jihadi John”, whom he idolised.

Khan used his agency job as a delivery driver with a pharmaceutical firm as cover to scout US air force bases in East Anglia for potential victims.

Detectives discovered he had been exchanging chilling online messages with an Isis fighter in Syria calling himself Abu Hussain. Prosecutors said Hussain was the British-born fanatic Junaid Hussain, who was killed in a US drone strike in the Isis stronghold of Raqqa weeks after his link with the planned UK attack was discovered.

One message described an attack on military personnel which they compared to the brutal murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013.

Sentencing Khan at Kingston crown court in London, Mr Justice Edis said: “Junead Khan was not far from the commission of the murder to be committed by horrifying method in the street in order to create terror and terrorist propaganda in this country. His offence was so serious that a life sentence must be imposed.”

Read More- The Guardian

Image courtesy of CPS/PA