Accused web terror trio change pleas to guilty

Fiendish net-cell masterminds or bonehead warez d00Dz?

By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Software & Security, 5th July 2007 11:51 GMT

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Three men accused of inciting terrorism via the internet have all now changed their pleas to guilty.

Younes Tsouli, 23, originally from Morocco and lately of Shepherd's Bush, native Briton Waseem Mughal, 24, of Chatham in Kent, and Tariq Al-Daour, 21, were on trial at Woolwich Crown Court. The three were said to have used email, chatrooms, and websites to promote the ideology of Osama bin Laden and to exhort others to commit murder.

The trial was briefly enlivened in May when the presiding beak was quoted as saying that he didn't know what a website was. Judge Peter Openshaw later said that in fact he was fully tech-savvy but had been trying to simplify complex testimony for the jury.

The three accused had initially pleaded not guilty, but on Monday Tsouli and Mughal changed their pleas to guilty. UAE-born Bayswater resident Al-Daour followed suit on Wednesday, and court officials confirmed to the Register that sentencing was scheduled for today and tomorrow.

Tsouli, Mughal, and al-Daour have admitted inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the UK which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder.

They also copped to conspiracy to defraud banks and credit card providers. They were said to have used false and stolen identities during their terror promotion activities, methods characterised by police as "sophisticated terror tradecraft".

Other analysts have suggested that at least one of the web terror masterminds was actually no more than a "warez d00D undone". ®

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