Gunrunner who supplied terrorists released early from jail despite law for longer sentences

From The Telegraph

A gunrunner who supplied jihadists with a weapon for a plot to kill a soldier or police officer has been released early from prison despite the Government’s crackdown forcing terrorists to serve longer sentences.  Nathan Cuffy, a Muslim convert known as Ismael, was jailed for eleven years in 2016 for supplying two terrorists with a handgun, silencer and ammunition as they plotted a drive-by attack.  

Cuffy, 30, was cleared of preparing terrorist acts and conspiracy to murder at an Old Bailey trial while the terrorists who stood trial alongside him at the Old Bailey and planned the attack were jailed for life with a minimum of at least 20 years.  

However, having been sentenced to automatic release at the halfway point and with time on remand taken into account, Cuffy was freed last month after serving five and a half years and is understood to be living in a hostel under supervision of probation.  The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was powerless to stop Cuffy’s release because the emergency laws introduced earlier this year do not extend to associates of terrorists.  

Cuffy claimed at the trial he was unaware that the former medical student Tarik Hassane, 28, and an accomplice Suhaib Majeed, 27 a King’s College physics student, intended to use the Baikal pistol to target members of the Parachute Regiment and police officers in west London from a moped.  Although he acknowledged they were “serious people,” he said:“To be honest, I didn’t think about it much. There were any number of criminal purposes but not a terrorist plot.”  

The plot — the first in which Islamists are known to have obtained a gun in the UK — was funded and directed by an Isil operative in Syria. Hassane, who conducted the online reconnaissance of a police station and territorial army barracks, was believed to have gone to Syria.  

After converting to Islam in 2012, Cuffy took a fundamentalist approach to the religion, wearing traditional Islamic clothing and giving up drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.  “I would go to the mosque five times a day, I deleted music from my phone and I tried to stop hanging around with females,” he said in evidence.  Oh, that the groomers and users of under-age English girls would do the same. 

Hassane, from Ladbroke Grove, west London, who pleaded guilty halfway through his trial was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years for conspiracy to murder and terrorism.   

His accomplice, Suhaib Majeed, was sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years after being found guilty of the same offences.  

 

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