Blackwater
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Serial bride who met and married her third husband through a Muslim dating site was jailed for eight years for planning to launch a terrorist attack upon Jewish communities in Manchester.
A serial bride who became a ''homegrown'' British terrorist after she met and married her third husband through a Muslim dating site was jailed for eight years today.
Hairdresser Shasta Khan, 38, had two failed marriages before becoming radicalised by Al Qaeda and inspired by Osama Bin Laden after she met ex-car valeter Mohammed Khan, 33, on an introduction site named ''Single Muslim'' because she was looking to marry the ''Islamic way.''
She ditched her Westernised and ''chilled out'' lifestyle in favour of strict traditional Islamic dress, stopped watching her favourite TV shows like Coronation Street and Eastenders and tuned into terrorist propaganda on the internet instead.
Shasta and her husband later began planning to build a DIY device using chapatti flour, hairdressing chemicals and a set of Christmas tree lights from supermarkets to launch a terrorist bomb attack upon Jewish communities in Manchester.
They also carried out reconnaisance missons on possible targets including a synagogue in the Prestwcih area and she was said to have used her home-based hairdressing business Sassy Hair Studio as a front to seek targets as part of a ''personal jihad.''
But the plot was exposed by chance in July last year when police were called to a report of a bust up between Khan and Shasta's father.
Khan was initially arrested on suspicion of stealing his father-in-law's car but anti terror officers were called in after a member of Shasta's family expressed concerns Khan was a ''homegrown'' terrorist.
Police raided the couple's two up two down terrace in Oldham, Greater Manchester found a string of documents with titles including ''39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad''.
Today at Manchester Crown Court, Shasta was convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and two counts of possessing a record of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
She denied the charges. Her husband pleaded guilty to engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism. He was given an indeterminate sentence and must serve a minimum of seven and a half years before being considered eligible for parole.
After the case Det Chief Supt Anthony Mole, head of the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit said: "It is impossible to say with any certainty what their exact endgame was or what their specific targets may have been but the evidence suggests they were in the attack-planning stage of a terrorist act motivated by anti-Semitic beliefs.
"What we must acknowledge is the dangers posed by the relatively easy access to online publications which contain instructions on how to make viable explosive devices from everyday household items, and how this can create 'home-grown' terrorists.
''The Khans did not need to travel to training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan - the knowledge they needed to commit a terrorist act was available at the click of a few buttons from the confines of their own home. This was 'jihad at home'.
"I would like to pay tribute to the diligence and hard work of all the officers who worked on this case. It is no exaggeration to say that their efforts to ensure the Khans were charged and ultimately convicted has saved people's lives."
Earlier the trial was told Shasta had been born in the UK but as a teenager was sent to Pakistan by her family into a forced marriage after her younger sister was caught with a boyfriend.
She had a daughter now aged 18 by her first husband but the marriage ended. She wed again but that marriage also crumbled.
She met Khan originally from Bradford, West Yorks on the Muslim dating site in July 2010 after claiming depression of having two broken marriages led to pray five times a day.
He had been previously married to a white woman but claimed he was looking for a wife ''in this life and the next.'' He proposed an Islamic marriage three days after the initial meeting when she said she regarded his dating profile as a ''beautiful sentiment.''
They married in August 2010 and they were pictured enjoying a honeymoon in Turkey and looking happy and relaxed as they rode a jetski.
But within weeks of the wedding the couple became strict Islamists with Khan wearing long white robes and growing a beard whilst she wore a burka.
They started reading and listening to extremist Al Qaeda-inspired media in November 2010 and behind the apparent normality of daily life, the couple believed in and supported an extreme ideology of jihad or holy war against the ''enemies of Islam'' -especially Jewish people.
Later the couple drove to Prestwich where he directed her to a Jewish temple and observed worshippers arriving and leaving. Whilst there Khan said: "We must kill them all."
Between March and July 2011, the couple began to access online bomb-making manuals and acquired everyday household items from supermarkets and high street retailers which could be used to construct a DIY device.
But the plot fell apart after Shasta's brother, Ibrahim, identified Khan as a ''home-grown terrorist'' and that when police spoke to her, she spilled the beans on her husband's activities. She was then arrested herself.
In her defence Shasta said she had been frightened of her husband and denied wrongdoing. She described her husband as 'racist', telling the jury he said she did not believe in Allah because she mixed with white people.
Asked if she had a problem with Jewish people, she said: "No. I have friends in Prestwich. I used to live there.''
'Homegrown' British terrorist bride jailed over Jewish plot - Telegraph
