By TRISTAN KIRK
Thursday, July 28, 2016
A London teenager who hatched a "naive" plot to join IS fighters in Syria has been locked up for three and a half years.
Cubeyda Hassan Jama, 19, packed his bags and headed for the war-torn region in February, but was stopped at Stansted Airport as he boarded a plane to Romania.
The teen had a rucksack of equipment in preparation for joining IS, but the Old Bailey heard he had not contacted the terrorist group, taken enough money to get there, or worked out how he was going to join.
Judge Gerald Gordon today sentenced Jama, of London Road, Thornton Heath, to three and a half years in a young offenders' institution, after he had admitted engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts.
The judge said the teen's father had forced him into a "nomadic lifestyle" growing up, moving from his native Finland to Somalia and then an aborted move to Egypt before settling in London.
"While in Somalia you had memorised the Koran, you spoke Somali and Arabic but here you had to learn English from scratch", he said.
"No doubt that made you somewhat isolated and with time on your hands."
The judge agreed with a psychiatrist's assessment of Jama as "naive", noting: "You were at obvious risk of radicalisation, be it self-radicalisation via the internet, radicalisation through others or a combination of the two.
"That is exactly what happened."
Police found beheading videos and radical speeches on electronic devices seized from Jama when he was arrested on February 5.
He was planning to travel on to Turkey and then into Syria, though had made no specific travel plans beyond Romania.
"If you did achieve your aim of joining Daesh, you would have had no option but to do whatever was required of you", said the judge.
"You were not travelling with any developed specific terrorist activities in mind, such as fighting, and in light of your comparative lack of funds, lack of detailed onwards travel planning, and apparent lack of necessary introduction to obtain acceptance into Daesh, your chances of having actually succeeded in your aim was low."
Jama will served half his sentence before being considered for release, and will spend an extra year on licence once he is free again.