Hairdresser who turned to terror

HONEYMOON . . . Sajid and Shasta Khan

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Pair to be sentenced today

A radicalised Muslim hairdresser from Oldham has been convicted of plotting terror attacks on the Jewish community in Manchester.

Shasta Khan (38) was yesterday found guilty at Manchester Crown Court, of three offences, including one of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism.

She and her husband Mohammed Sajid Khan (33), known as Sajid, were arrested for the offences in July last year, after her brother revealed to police he thought Sajid was a “home-grown terrorist”.

Sajid Khan pleaded guilty to engaging in terror acts at an earlier hearing, and the couple will now stand alongside each other to be sentenced this afternoon.

The couple bought substances and equipment from supermarkets to assemble an improvised explosive device.

Police had found a cache of terror–related material after being called to a domestic dispute at their home in Foster Street, Clarksfield.

Beheading videos, propaganda glorifying Osama bin Laden and bomb–making guides were seized along with peroxide and bleach, used by Shasta Khan in her hairdressing work, which together with electrical equipment were being readied to make a bomb.

The court were told that when the two met they were both Westernised, but slowly became more committed to Islam and in turn, radicalised.

She wailed in the dock as the jury gave their verdicts after 13-hours of deliberations.

They found her guilty of acquiring substances, equipment and information of use in making explosives and assembling an improvised explosive device, plus two counts of possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism in relation to computer files.

She was cleared of a possession charge in relation to another document.








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