A British man accused of helping fuel the violence in Syria by joining Kurdish militants fighting Islamic State boasted his life was like something out of Mad Max in one of a series of dairy entries, a court has heard.

Aidan James, 28, from Formby, Merseyside, had no previous military knowledge when he allegedly set out to join the bloody war in 2017 on behalf of the Kurdish people.

James is on trial for engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts and for undergoing terrorist training for his involvement with groups associated with the Marxist political organisation, the PKK.

The PKK, or or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has been banned in the UK since 2001 for its advocating of Kurdish self-rule through both political and armed struggle.

James is accused of receiving training from the PKK, including weapons, before going on to fight with a series of Kurdish YPG units, or People’s Protection Units, in Syria.

Prosecutor Mark Heywood QC said: “Mr James is not charged with any offence that his purpose was simply to go to fight Isis, rather the charges are levelled against him because his intention was to lend support to advance a political or ideological cause.”

James prepared himself to join their cause in an “amateurish way” and underwent weapons training in Iraq for a month, the Old Bailey was told.

From there, he went to the Syrian border with Iraq for another month of training, jurors heard.

James had been monitored by police via the anti-terror Prevent programme after broadcasting his intentions on Facebook and had even been arrested on April 28 2017.

He had been bailed until the next month but the bail was cancelled and no further action was taken against him.

On the day his passport was returned, he wrote in his journal that he was still planning to travel to Syria or Iraq “to fight this most important of battles against the sick ideology of Daesh”.

James prepared for his trip by undergoing initial training in north Wales and by acquiring rudimentary combat equipment including body armour.

He later began planning his journey, arriving in Makhmour, Iraq, between the end of August and October 1 2017.

In a series of journal entries he described his training and a series of raids against Isis strongholds.

In one he mourned the death of a fellow soldier, writing: “Great guy.

RIP friend we will continue to fight.”

“Raids went good. After the raids we sat and drank shots of red bull and discussed politics,” another entry read.

In another he describes sitting on the roof of a humvee “with a 50 calibre machine gun, like something out of Mad Max”.

But he also expressed his discontent with the mindset of his commanders, complaining they were trying to brainwash him.

He wrote: “There’s a lot of f***ed up things here. Ideology comes before all else – it’s just basically a f****** brainwash factory.

“I’m here to help people. Not to get brainwashed and change my beliefs.”

Mr Heywood said: “He had picked his cause and it was the cause of just one of the many groups of people that inhabit that part of the world and would like it to be their own, the Kurdish people.

“The prosecution case against him is that he went as an individual to Syria to fight with guns and explosives.”

Mr Heywood added: “For these purposes, the law says that what he wanted to do was terrorism, even if his eventual fighting was against other terrorists.”

James denies engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts and two charges of attending a place used for terrorist training.

Two friends who attempted to travel to Syria have been found guilty of preparing for terrorist acts in support of the so-called Islamic State.

Safwaan Mansur, from Birmingham, and Hanzalah Patel, from Leicester, travelled to Turkey in 2016 and 2017 after checking out an area near the Syrian border on TripAdvisor, a two-week trial was told.

Jurors heard the men, who spent nine days in jail in Turkey in 2017 after being arrested at an Istanbul hotel, bought camping equipment, outdoor survival clothing and airline tickets before travelling initially to Germany.

Prosecutors alleged Mansur, 22, of Hampton Road, Aston, and Patel, also 22, of Frederick Road, Leicester, undertook a 24-hour bus journey from Istanbul to near the Syrian border during a previous visit to Turkey in 2016.

Opening the case against the pair at Birmingham Crown Court, prosecutor Simon Davis said they were arrested at Heathrow Airport in 2017 after being reported missing by family members.

During subsequent questioning by police, the court heard Mansur said he had gone to Turkey’s Hatay province – described in court as a “transit area” for Syria – in 2016 to “have a look” like “lots of other tourists”.

Claiming items including water purifiers and solar chargers were found in the men’s luggage, Mr Davis told the court: “Mr Patel, when interviewed, throughout maintained a no comment stance, as was his right.”

Jurors were told Mansur said items in his luggage were gifts for friends at a mosque in Germany, where he intended to stop off en route to or from Turkey.

Outlining Mansur’s account, Mr Davis told the jury panel: “The people at the mosque liked outdoor pursuits like camping – that was the explanation being given.”

Questioning why the former school friends had misled their families and travelled via another country to Turkey, Mr Davis told the jury: “You might want to ask yourselves whether this was an innocent camping holiday or, as the prosecution allege, the two of them engaging in conduct with a view to crossing into Syria with the intention of joining Islamic State.”

Lawyers acting for both defendants said the men had formed a “naive and idiotic” plan to cross into Syria, but had no intention of fighting or committing acts of terrorism.

West Midlands Police said Patel’s father contacted the police force in June 2017 after becoming concerned, having learned that his son had lied about leading prayers at a mosque in Germany.

Commenting on the inquiry, the temporary head of the West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit, Chief Superintendent Shaun Edwards, said: “Patel had on his media devices links to an online guide on how to join the terrorist group and he made several successful credit card applications before using the funds to buy the outdoor equipment.

“Electronic devices seized from Patel on his arrest in the UK contained graphic images, videos and text glorifying Daesh. The content gives an insight into their mind-set and showed they were developing an active interest in Daesh and Jihadi ideology.”

Mansur and Patel are due to be sentenced on April 25.

A British man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday over a plot to kill Prime Minister Theresa May by first detonating an explosive device to get into her Downing Street office and then using a knife or a gun to attack her.

Naa’imur Rahman, 21, of north London, planned to detonate an improvised explosive device at the heavily guarded gates of Downing Street and gain access to May’s office in the ensuing chaos and assassinate her, according to police.

He was convicted last month of preparing to commit acts of terrorism and at London’s Old Bailey court on Friday was given a life prison and will serve 30 years behind bars.

“Rahman’s target was the prime minister but he had no qualms about killing innocent bystanders in the process of reaching her,” said Dean Haydon, the UK’s Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism.

“At one point he told a covert counter terrorism officer that even if he could not reach the Prime Minister, he just wanted to strike fear into people.”

As he put the plot together, Rahman believed he was corresponding online with members of the Islamic State (IS) militant group. However, he was actually talking to undercover officers from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Britain’s MI5 domestic spy agency.

He was arrested last November shortly after unwittingly meeting an undercover police officer and collecting what he believed was a homemade bomb but was in fact a harmless replica.

After his conviction in July, police said Rahman had been in contact with an uncle who had travelled to Syria and joined IS and who had encouraged his nephew to carry out attacks in Britain.

Rahman had been planning to carry out the attack for two years but his resolve was hardened when he heard that his uncle had been killed in a drone attack.

Britain is on its second highest threat level with an attack considered highly likely. Last year, there were four deadly attacks and the head of MI5 said in May that a further 12 Islamist plots had been foiled since the first of these in March 2017.

Earlier this month, a man was charged with attempted murder after a car careered into people and a barrier at London’s parliament, with police saying the incident was being treated as an act of terrorism.

A U.N. investigative team that will collect and preserve evidence of acts by Islamic State in Iraq that may be war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide started work this week, nearly a year after the Security Council created it.

At last September’s annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, the council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution – after a year of talks with Iraq – asking U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to create the team “to support domestic efforts” to hold the militants accountable.

U.N. experts had warned in June 2016 that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the minority religious community through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

Guterres notified the 15-member Security Council in a letter that the U.N. team, led by British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, would start work on Aug. 20.

Guterres announced in May that he had appointed Khan after the Security Council approved the scope and limitations for the team in February. He said in the letter, released on Thursday, that Khan visited Iraq earlier this month.

Use of evidence collected by the team in other venues, such as international courts, would “be determined in agreement with the Government of Iraq on a case-by-case basis.” Evidence is for primary use by Iraqi authorities, followed by “competent national-level courts,” according to the 2017 U.N. resolution.

International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi woman who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, have long pushed Iraq to allow U.N. investigators to help.

Islamic State, which until last year controlled large areas in Syria and Iraq, has since been driven into the desert by successive defeats in offensives by international allies in both countries. The U.N. investigative team’s mission does not include Syria.

A Michigan man seized overseas by a U.S.-backed Syrian militia has been charged with providing material support to Islamic State militants, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

Ibraheem Izzy Musaibli, 28, of Dearborn, Michigan, provided support to the group from 2015 until last month, the department said in a statement. Musaibli, a natural-born U.S. citizen, will be arraigned in federal court in Detroit on Wednesday, it said.

U.S. prosecutors in Indiana said Musaibli was transferred from the custody of the Syrian Democratic Forces along with a U.S. woman, Samantha Elhassani, who has been charged with making false statements to the FBI.

Elhassani was accompanied by her four minor U.S. citizen children, who were placed in the care of the Indiana Department of Child Services, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana said in a statement.

Both defendants arrived in Indiana on Tuesday. Musaibli was transferred to Michigan, and Elhassani, also known as Samantha Sally, will appear in federal court in Hammond, Indiana, at a later date, according to the statement.

The New York Times said last week that Musaibli was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria earlier in July as he tried to escape the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the group has been working to drive Islamic State militants from one of the last areas they control.

The man’s younger brother said he believed Musaibli was innocent, the Detroit News reported on Tuesday.

“I don’t just believe he’s innocent. I KNOW he’s innocent,” Abdullah Musaibli said via Facebook Messenger, according to the newspaper. Musaibli will have a court-appointed lawyer, the brother said.

Abdullah Musaibli said last week his brother was not a terrorist and that he had been lured by fellow Muslims into going to Syria to study religion and to work, the Detroit News said.

We know that specific institutions have on many occasions been the generator for producing radicalised individuals who go onto commit terrorists attacks. Another such institution based in Indonesia which has generated militants from Indonesia to Syria, has been the Ibnu Mas’ud boarding school where Muslim students are provided with boarding facilities, food and religious education. 

Ibnu Mas‘ud is one of about 30,000 Islamic boarding schools, or ‘pesantren’, across Indonesia. Many of these ‘pesantren’ provide much needed care and basic items for young people though Indonesian officials admit that a handful have generated young people who have actively been involved in terrorism and in the promulgation of extremism.

The chart below shows the radical alumni that have graduated from Ibnu Mas’ud. These radical alumni took two routes, one to set up local bases in Indonesia, with a second batch moving onto fighting with Daesh or the Islamic State. 

The radical alumni include individuals present in the Aceh training camp for Indonesian militants which was commanded by an individual called Dulmatin. Implicated in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, Dulmatin had a bounty of $10 million on his head. Fearing an attack from militants in the Aceh camp against Government buildings and assets, a Government raid was conducted in 2010, leading to the capture of a number of militants who had studied at Ibnu Mas’ud. These included:

• Hari Budiman: Jailed for 5 years for financing the Aceh camp,
• Kamaludin: Jailed for 6 years for bank robberies to fund the militant training camp
• Sofya Tsauri: Jailed for supplying weapons to militants
• Enceng Kurnia: a logistics expert and a militant Islamist
• Agus Kasdianto: Involved in the failed Jakarta bomb plot and for sustaining the terrorist camp.

Graduates of Ibnu Mas’ud who went onto fight for the Islamic State included:

• Hatf Saiful Rasul: A 12 year old who fought and died in Syria for IS
• Umar Jundal Haq: The son of a Bali bomber, who joined IS and who died in Syria
• Didi Resdianto: Who travelled to Syria with his family and whose wife became a cheerleader for the Islamic State online

The Indonesian Government increasingly realises the internal threat to its own population and to the stability of the country by radical and extremist preachers and institutions. The fact that Indonesia remains a possible staging post for such militants to export young men for a global Jihad, will no doubt remain on the minds of Indonesian officials. 

Manchester, Westminster and now London Bridge. Many lives, families and communities deeply affected by the actions of Islamist terrorists who have tried to attack the peace of our country. The list sadly continues on as 6 are reported to have been murdered last night by what looks like another Islamist terrorist attack.

It is clear that Islamic State has influenced some of the actions of terrorists through calls to disrupt and harm people and communities by the use of vehicles and knives. This fits into the modus operandi of the terrorists that attacked London yesterday.

At this time, we ask that people reflect and think about those who have died and who have been injured. There will be lost of commentary in the coming days about extremism and terrorism, though at this time, we need to remember the many who have been murdered on our streets because of such attacks.

London will remain strong and resilient. This does not mean that we are weak or complacent as a City. What it means is that it redoubles our joint efforts to tackle the extremist rhetoric that fuels terrorism, as well as working closely with law enforcement agencies.

Jordanian security forces freed tourists trapped inside a medieval castle on Sunday after storming the building where armed men had taken shelter following a shoot-out with police that killed at least nine people, security sources said.

A Canadian woman, three other civilians and five police officers were among the nine killed during the exchange of gunfire between the assailants and security forces. At least 29 people were taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, the sources said.

Police in the mountainous city of Karak had earlier freed 10 people, including foreign tourists, but some were still being held in the Crusader-era castle from where the gunmen shot at security forces who were surrounding it, a security source said.

The identity of the assailants was not immediately clear.

A former government minister from Karak city, Sameeh Maaytah, said there were signs Islamist militants may have been behind the attack but the government has so far steered away from saying this.

“The operation is continuing, it has not ended and the criminals are still inside the castle … This was a group that was plotting certain operations inside Jordan,” Maaytah told pan-Arab news channel al-Hadath.

Video footage on social media showed security forces taking groups of young Asian tourists up the castle’s steep steps to its main entrance as gunshots were heard overhead.

The castle is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions.

Prime Minister Hani al Mulki told parliament “a number of security personnel” had been killed and that security forces were laying siege to the castle. The Canadian government confirmed one of its nationals had been killed.

Police and witnesses said gunmen had earlier gone on a shooting spree aimed at officers patrolling the town before entering the castle, perched on top of a hill. They used one of the castle’s towers to fire at a nearby police station.

Police said the gunmen had arrived from the desert town of Qatraneh nearly 30 km northeast of Karak city, a desert outpost known for smuggling, where many tribal residents are heavily armed.

They had fled to Karak after an exchange of fire with the police at a residential building, security forces said.

Jordan is one of the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria. But many Jordanians oppose their country’s involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Officials worry about radical Islam’s growing profile in Jordan and support in impoverished areas for militant groups.

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A vigil takes place in Cairo to remember those who lost their lives in a bombing at the city’s largest Coptic cathedral last Sunday (December 11).

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a suicide bombing that killed at least 25 people.

The militant group said in a statement carried by its news agency Amaq that a suicide bomber whom it identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri had detonated his explosive belt inside the church.

“Every infidel and apostate in Egypt and everywhere should know that our war … continues,” it said.

The Interior Ministry identified the bomber on Monday as 22-year-old student Mahmoud Shafik Mohammed Mostafa, and said he was a supporter of the banned Muslim Brotherhood political movement who had joined a militant cell while on the run from police.

In an interview with Reuters, Mostafa’s mother said he had been sexually abused in police custody in 2014, but that she had seen no sign that he had been radicalised.

In addition to the dead, at least 49 people were wounded when the bomb went off in a chapel adjoining St Mark’s Cathedral, Cairo’s largest church and seat of the Coptic Christian papacy.