Man who posted terrorist messages online is convicted

A man who posted a number of images online promoting Daesh has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for encouraging terrorism.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard how Shafi Mohammed Saleem, 28 (03.03.89) of east London used in excess of 20 Twitter and Instagram handles to share his poisonous pro-Daesh messages between 2016 and 2017.

Detectives from the Met arrested Saleem at his home address on 19 April 2017 after launching an intelligence-led investigation into his online activities.

One of Saleem’s tweets included an image of two ‘zombie knives’, with just the word “itching”. Another showed a second man holding the knives, with the words “dip dip dip”, meaning ‘to stab’.

Detectives recovered nine digital devices from Saleem’s home address, containing one terabyte of data. Specialist forensic investigators trawled through the data, retrieving images of articles from terrorist magazines, videos of Osama Bin Laden and Daesh militants, and a picture saved on Saleem’s Telegram app showing him posing with what appears to be a genuine handgun.

An image retrieved from a laptop he had, also showed a meeting between a number of men including the convicted terrorists Anjem Choudhary and Mizanur Rahman.

Commander Dean Haydon, of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “I cannot underplay the importance of bringing before the courts people who tweet subversive messages promoting Daesh. Every tweet has the potential to radicalise vulnerable people.

“Arresting and bringing to justice people who send messages like Saleem did is just one of the ways that counter terrorism officers nationally are tackling the threat from terrorist propaganda online. The national Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit also scours the internet daily for material like this and by working with hundreds of social media platforms globally, it has ensured the removal of more than 300,000 terrorist and extremist posts in the past seven years.”

Anyone who sees material online which they believe to be terrorist or extremist is urged to report it via: www.gov.uk/act