An Isis fanatic who plotted to bomb Downing Street and behead Theresa May has been jailed for life. Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman was walking down a London road with what he believed was a pressure cooker bomb and a suicide vest when he was arrested in November.
Sentencing the 21-year-old to life imprisonment, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said that although the devices were fakes provided by the security services, he planned to carry out a major terror attack.
The judge said Rahman hoped to kill as many police officers, bystanders and tourists as possible by detonating a bomb at the gates of Downing Street before storming the building to murder the prime minister and blow himself up.
Rahman is a very dangerous individual and it is difficult to predict when, if ever, he will become deradicalised and no longer a danger to society, the judge said.
Rahman was handed a minimum term of 30 years for the planned attack, and a further six years to be served consecutively for preparing terrorist acts by recording a video to help a friend join Isis in Libya.
The defendant, who appeared in court wearing a dark scull cap and with long hair and a beard, sat impassive in the dock during the lengthy hearing, at times stretching and putting his hands behind his head.
Rahman remained silent as he was sentenced, being watched from the public gallery by his sister, mother and her partner, and looked the judge and journalists in the eye as he was led away.
It is hoped that you will come to realise this one day.
His defence lawyer, Ali Bajwa QC, told the Old Bailey that there had been little risk of actual harm because Rahman had been the subject of an international undercover investigation for the duration of his planning.
He had unwittingly disclosed the details of his plot to three British and American agents posing as Isis emirs online, and was given a fake pressure cooker bomb, suicide vest and pepper spray by an undercover officer in London.
But Mr Justice Haddon-Cave rejected the arguments, saying law enforcement officers were scrupulously careful not to overstep the mark.
It is not a case of entrapment or inducement to terrorism in any sense, he added. Rahman was both the instigator and author of his own course of conduct. he believed the devices were capable of the most serious harm.
An undercover officer known as Shaq told the would-be attacker that the pressure cooker bomb would case a similar level of damage to the Isis-inspired Manchester Arena attack, which Rahman praised after the deaths of 22 victims, and that the suicide vest had a blast radius of 10m.