Man Guilty Of Terrorism Offences

A Derby man has been convicted of five terrorism offences and handed down a seven year jail term at Preston Crown Court.

Krenar Lusha, 30, of Moore Street, was in the process of downloading explosive making documentation when counter-terror officers raided his home last August, as part of an intelligence-led operation.

Upon arrival they found a laptop in a downstairs room that was downloading items from an internet forum that included files giving instructions on how to make explosives and suicide belts.

Lusha was arrested and officers spent three weeks searching his house.

A total of 71.8 litres of petrol in various containers, two kilograms of potassium nitrate, a live shotgun cartridge, three computers, 13 external hard drives, five memory sticks, three memory cards, 768 cd/dvds and 15 mobile phones were recovered from the house.

Almost 4300 gigabytes of memory was recovered in various forms. Police suggested it would take 68,359 four-draw filing cabinets to store the data.

Some of the material included videos of explosions, violent beheadings and hostage takings, as well as information on fundamentalist Jihad.

In internet chatrooms Lusha described himself as a terrorist and said that he loved to see Jews and Americans killed.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit, said there is no indication of what Lusha intended to do with these items.

However, Mr Porter said he believed Lusha intended to commit an "extremely serious offence".

He was convicted of five counts of possessing an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism contrary to Section 57(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000.

He was jailed for seven years.

(PR/KMcA)