A man has been found guilty of travelling to Syria to fight with a terrorist group linked to al Qaida for jihad.

Isa Giga, 32, resigned from his job as a technical support consultant job at a technology firm and bought a business class return flight to Turkey before crossing into war-torn Syria in August 2015.

Despite pleas from his family, Giga did not return to the UK for nine years and was arrested upon his arrival on a flight from Turkey last May.

Following a trial at the Old Bailey, he was found guilty of preparation of terrorist acts between August 31 2015 and August 31 2016 by travelling to Syria to fight with the Jaysh Al Fath groups.

The court heard how Giga had left the home he shared with his parents and sister in Hounslow, west London, in August 2015 and informed them he had gone to Syria for jihad.

On September 11 2015 – the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States – he told his sister: “I have come here to fight for jihad. I’m based in Idlib province and I fight for Jaysh al Fath which is the rebel coalition which includes the Free Syrian Army up to al Qaida-linked groups.

“I have come here to fight against (Bashar) Assad and also to fight against Isis. I can’t sit at home when fellow Muslims are in need and their religion is in danger.”

His father responded: “Please don’t do anything that will break my or your mother’s or family’s heart, stay within the bounds of true Islam and humanity, stay away from extremism and follow the Sunnah.”

But in a further message to his sister, Giga said he had finished his training and had been given the “opportunity to fight on the front line in the near future”.

He told her: “I hope more than anything to gain martyrdom while fighting against Isis or against the Assad regime but I fear death as much as anyone else so I am in need of your duas (prayers).”

The court heard that Giga’s father did everything he could to try to convince his son to return home and travelled to Reyhanli, a small Turkish town close to the Syrian border.

In a letter to Giga from the border, he wrote: “I have promısed your mum that somehow I will try my best to convince you to come out of there, and we will settle down anywhere in this world where you feel comfortable and happy…

“Can you for one minute imagine what the rest of her life will be like if something was to happen to you? Isa, her life wıll be destroyed and so will all of ours.

“It is on that basis I beg you to stay safe and come out of there immediately. And stay away from the front line because the Russians are using all kınds of firepower.”

However, Giga appeared to be set on “martyrdom”, the court heard.

Then in December 2015, Giga told his sister that he planned on doing charity work – although the organisation concerned had no record of it – and by August 2016 contact with his family petered out.

Eight years later, Giga was issued an emergency passport by the British Consulate in Istanbul.

Police were waiting when Giga arrived at Heathrow Airport on a Turkish Airlines flight on May 23 2024.

Following his arrest, Giga made no comment in police interviews but in a prepared statement denied he had travelled to Syria to fight or join any groups.

He claimed he had lied to his family about doing charity work, training, fighting and joining groups because he thought they would struggle to understand the idea of going there simply to live.

Giving evidence in his Old Bailey trial, Giga maintained that he had gone to Syria only to live in an Islamic state.

A jury deliberated for 10 hours and 26 minutes to reject his version of events and find him guilty by a majority of 11 to one.

Judge Mark Lucraft KC ordered a report and adjourned sentencing to October 17.

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “We have been clear for some time now that anyone returning to the UK suspected of being involved in any terrorist-related activity overseas will be thoroughly investigated.

“We work very closely with other partners and agencies here in the UK and overseas in order to do this and help keep the public safe.

“As this case shows, we will always arrest those who return to the UK after fighting for a terrorist group, no matter how long it has been since they left the country.”

Three Uighurs who fled from China to Turkey have described forced abortions and torture by Chinese authorities in the far western Xinjiang region.

They were speaking ahead of giving evidence to a people’s tribunal in London that is investigating if Beijing’s actions against ethnic Uighurs amount to genocide.

One woman said she was forced to have an abortion when she was six and half months pregnant, a former doctor spoke of draconian birth control policies, and a man alleged he was “tortured day and night” by Chinese soldiers while he was imprisoned in the remote border region.

They spoke to the Associated Press before giving by videolink to the independent UK tribunal, which is expected to draw dozens of witnesses when it opens four days of hearings on Friday.

The tribunal, which does not have UK Government backing, will be chaired by prominent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who led the prosecution of ex-Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and worked with the International Criminal Court.

While the tribunal’s judgment is not binding on any government, organisers hope the process of publicly laying out evidence will compel international action to tackle growing concerns about alleged abuses in Xinjiang against the Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group.

One witness, mother-of-four Bumeryem Rozi, 55, said authorities in Xinjiang rounded her up along with other pregnant women to abort her fifth child in 2007. She said she complied because she feared that otherwise authorities would have confiscated her home and belongings and endangered her family.

“I was six and a half months pregnant. The police came, one Uighur and two Chinese. They put me and eight other pregnant women in cars and took us to the hospital,” Ms Rozi said.

“They first gave me a pill and said to take it. So I did. I didn’t know what it was. Half an hour later, they put a needle in my belly. And some time after that I lost my child.”

Semsinur Gafur, a former obstetrician-gynaecologist who worked in a village hospital in Xinjiang in the 1990s, said she and other female clinicians used to go house to house with a mobile ultrasound machine to check if anyone was pregnant.

“If a household had more births than allowed, they would raze the home. They would flatten the house, destroy it,” Ms Gafur said.

“This was my life there. It was very distressing. And because I worked in a state hospital, people didn’t trust me. The Uighur people saw me as a Chinese traitor.”

A third exile, Mahmut Tevekkul, said he was imprisoned and tortured in 2010 by Chinese authorities who interrogated him for information about one of his brothers. He said the brother was wanted partly because he published a religious book in Arabic.

Mr Tevekkul described being beaten and punched in the face during questioning.

“They put us on a tiled floor, shackled our hands and feet and tied us to a pipe, like a gas pipe. There were six soldiers guarding us. They interrogated us until the morning and then they took us to the maximum-security area of the prison,” he said.

The tribunal is the latest attempt to hold China accountable for alleged rights abuses against the Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim and ethnic Turkic minorities.

An estimated one million people or more — most of them Uighurs — have been confined in re-education camps in Xinjiang in recent years, according to researchers.

Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labour, systematic forced birth control and torture, and separating children from incarcerated parents.

Beijing has flatly rejects the allegations. Officials have characterised the camps, which they say are now closed, as vocational training centres to teach Chinese language, job skills and the law to support economic development and combat extremism.

The hearings’ organisers said Chinese authorities have ignored requests to participate in the proceedings.

Turkey has withdrawn from a European treaty protecting women from violence that it was the first to sign 10 years ago and that bears the name of its largest city.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decree annulling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention is a blow to women’s rights advocates, who say the agreement is crucial to combating domestic violence.

The Council of Europe’s secretary general, Marija Pejcinovic Buric, called the decision “devastating”.

“This move is a huge setback to these efforts and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond,” she said.

The Istanbul Convention states that men and women have equal rights and obliges state authorities to take steps to prevent gender-based violence against women, protect victims and prosecute perpetrators.

Some officials from Mr Erdogan’s Islam-oriented party have advocated a review of the agreement, arguing it encourages divorce and undermines the traditional family, which they say are contrary to the country’s conservative values.

Critics also claim the treaty promotes homosexuality through the use of categories like gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. They see that as a threat to Turkish families.

Hate speech has been on the rise in Turkey, including the interior minister who described LGBT people as “perverts” in a tweet. Mr Erdogan has rejected their existence altogether.

Women’s groups and their allies who have been protesting to keep the convention intact immediately called for demonstrations across the country under the slogan “Withdraw the decision, implement the treaty”. They said their years-long struggle would not be erased in one night.

Rights groups say violence against and killing of women is on the rise in Turkey but the interior minister called that a “complete lie”.

A total of 77 women have been killed since the start of the year, according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform. Some 409 women were killed in 2020, with dozens found dead under suspicious circumstances, according to the group.

Advocacy group Women’s Coalition Turkey said the withdrawal from a human rights agreement was a first in Turkey. “It is clear that this decision will further encourage the murderers of women, harassers, rapists,” their statement said.

Turkey’s minister for family, labour and social policies tweeted that women’s rights are still protected by Turkish laws and the judicial system is “dynamic and strong enough” to enact new regulations. Zehra Zumrut Selcuk also tweeted the government would continue to have “zero tolerance” for violence against women.

Mr Erdogan has repeatedly stressed the “holiness” of the family and called on women to have three children. His communications director, Fahrettin Altun, said the government’s motto was “Powerful Families, Powerful Society”.

Many women suffer physical or sexual violence at the hands of their husbands or partners, but up-to-date official statistics are unavailable. The Istanbul Convention requires states to collect data.

Two students have been arrested in Turkey on charges of inciting hatred and insulting religious values for a poster depicting Islam’s most sacred site with LGBT flags.

The arrests came after top Turkish officials condemned the poster, displayed at an exhibition in Turkey’s prestigious Bogazici University.

For weeks, students and faculty have been protesting over the Turkish president’s appointment of a new rector with links to his ruling party and clashes have broken out with police.

Interior minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted that “LGBT perverts” had been detained for “disrespecting the Great Kaaba”.

Top government officials from Turkey’s conservative, Islamic-based ruling party condemned the poster.

The Kaaba in Mecca is the holiest site in Islam, with believers across the world praying in its direction.

The poster placed a mythical creature of half-woman and half-snake found in Middle Eastern folklore on the site of worship along with the flags of LGBT, lesbian, trans and asexual people.

The text below said the artwork was a critique of traditional gender roles.

Istanbul’s governor’s office said five people were initially detained and police were seeking two more suspects.

One person was released, two put under house arrest and two were jailed pending trial.

Police searched the fine arts and LGBTI+ student clubs at the university.

The statement said police found books on an outlawed Kurdish group and rainbow flags.

The rector Melih Bulu tweeted that an attack on Islamic values was unacceptable and had no place in the university’s values.

Student group Bogazici Solidarity said the exhibition of more than 300 artworks was partly to protest over the new rector and acknowledged that Muslim students had issues with the posters.

“All artwork is open for criticism. But putting an artwork on trial is simply a restriction of the freedom of expression,” its statement read.

The group emphasised the value of pluralism in the university and said hate speech against LGBTIs was unacceptable.

The university’s LGBTI group tweeted that it stood with its friends and said it rejects the new rector “who targeted his own students”.

A Turkish court on Monday sentenced a suspected member of so-called Islamic State to life in prison for the New Year’s Eve attack on a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017 that left 39 people dead.

Abdulkadir Masharipov, of Uzbekistan, was convicted of 39 counts of murder and one count of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.

He was given 40 separate life sentences without parole. The court also sentenced him to a total of 1,368 years for the attempted murder of 79 people who escaped the attack with injuries.

Early on January 1, 2017, a gunman shot his way into Istanbul’s Reina nightclub where hundreds were partying to celebrate the New Year.

The gunman escaped from the scene and Islamic State later claimed responsibility.

Several revellers jumped into the waters of the Bosphorus to escape the attack. Most of the dead were foreigners.

Police arrested Masharipov in a raid 15 days after the attack.

Masharipov initially admitted that he had carried out the attack but later denied the charges against him, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

In his final words of defence on Monday, Masharipov asked that he be acquitted, saying his initial testimonies were taken under “torture and pressure”. He insisted there was insufficient evidence against him, Anadolu said.

He is expected to appeal against his conviction.

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 terror suspect accused of planning to join Islamic State claimed to have visited a Turkish province bordering Syria as a “tourist excursion” after checking the area out on TripAdvisor, a jury has heard.

Safwaan Mansur, from Birmingham, and Hanzalah Patel, from Leicester, both deny a charge of travelling to Turkey in preparation for terrorist acts.

The men, who spent nine days in jail in Turkey in 2017 after being arrested at an Istanbul hotel, now claim they intended to travel briefly into Syria to gain “bragging rights” on their return.

Prosecutors allege 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.

“He put forward two prepared statements which were effectively denials of any wrongdoing.”

Jurors were told Mansur told officers 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.”

Addressing the reasons given by Mansur for the 2016 visit to Turkey, Mr Davis added: “He said he had checked on TripAdvisor … effectively explaining the trip to Hatay as a long tourist excursion.”

At the conclusion of his opening speech, Mr Davis said jurors would be invited to consider whether the men intended to commit terrorist acts.

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.”

The Crown’s opening was followed by a brief speech to the jury by Patel’s barrister, Richard Thomas.

Mr Thomas, making submissions for both defendants, said: “The issue in this case is not, ‘Did they intend to go to Syria?’

“The central issue between the prosecution and the defence is whether they made those efforts to travel to Syria with the intention to commit acts of terrorism.

“They are adamant they had no intention whatsoever of fighting or otherwise committing acts of terrorism.”

Mansur and Patel had “hopelessly naive and idiotic” plans to cross the Turkey-Syria border and return soon after “having seen something of what was happening” to secure bragging rights on their return, Mr Thomas said.

The case continues on Wednesday.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wrapped up an ill-tempered visit to Germany on Saturday with a visit to Cologne, where a security lockdown kept supporters and protesters away from a ceremony to open the country’s largest mosque.

Police snipers were stationed on rooftops and the area was cordoned off after the city authorities cancelled plans for up to 25,000 people to be allowed to gather outside the mosque, built by an Islamic religious organisation that has close ties to the Turkish state.

Germany had invited Erdogan for the three-day state visit in an attempt to mend ties hit by a crackdown on his opponents following a failed coup in 2016, hoping to secure the release of several of its citizens who remain in detention.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said after meeting Erdogan on Friday that “deep divisions” remain. On Saturday in Cologne, the Turkish leader sought to strike a conciliatory note.

“In a critical period, we have made a fruitful, successful visit to Germany,” he told guests at the opening of the Central Mosque. “I stressed that we need to put aside our differences and focus on our common interests.”

Yet he also called on Germany to crack down on Kurdish separatists, and complained that soccer star Mesut Ozil had been hounded out of the German national team after Germany’s World Cup exit because of his Turkish roots.

“This racism has to end,” said Erdogan.

At a banquet hosted by President Frank Walter Steinmeier on Friday night the Turkish leader, departing from his prepared remarks, accused Germany of harbouring terrorists, according to those present.

“Hate speech against Germany,” ran the headline in Saturday’s edition of best-selling daily Bild.

NEITHER BETTER NOR SIMPLER

Senior Merkel allies said the visit had been premature, and ruled out providing any fresh economic aid to Turkey, which has suffered a slump in its currency following the imposition of trade sanctions by Washington.

“The timing of this visit was wrong – it was far too early,” Norbert Roettgen, chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Funke newspaper group. “The Turkish-German relationship is neither better nor simpler after this visit.”

In Cologne, a major centre of the 3 million-strong Turkish community in Germany, a few hundred Erdogan supporters gathered behind security barriers waving flags and wearing scarves in Turkey’s red-and-white national colours.

“It’s a great honour for us,” said supporter Ali Tas of Erdogan’s visit.

Around 1,000 protesters – including emigres and German left-wing activists – gathered on the opposite bank of the River Rhine after being denied permission to march through the city centre.

“I don’t like that the German government is in cahoots with a head of state who locks up people, imprisons journalists and (ethnically) cleanses his own country,” said a German man who gave his name as Goetz.

Regional chief minister Armin Laschet did not attend the mosque opening, citing the importance of separating state and religion. Other local civic leaders complained that they were not invited to the event.

Erdogan and Laschet met earlier at Cologne airport. They were to have held talks at a stately home, but the venue was switched after its owners objected.

Every Saturday for 23 years, dozens of people have held a vigil in a central Istanbul square, sitting in silence and holding pictures of relatives who went missing in police detention.

The group was about to stage their 700th demonstration last Saturday when Turkish police told them their protest was banned, before firing tear gas and plastic pellets to disperse the crowd and detaining dozens – including a 82-year-old woman who was among the first to protest in 1995 in search of her son.

The sit-in by the so-called Saturday Mothers was one of the few remaining public protests near Istanbul’s Taksim square, once a vibrant demonstration ground but now off limits for opposition groups.

Critics say that breaking up the vigil was another sign that NATO member Turkey is drifting into more authoritarian rule under President Tayyip Erdogan, adding to Ankara’s already deteriorating record on human rights and media freedoms.

Casting the protest as a cover for supporting terrorism, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the Saturday Mothers were linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and hinted the vigils would no longer be allowed.

“This has been one of Turkey’s oldest civil disobedience movements,” said Ahmet Sik, former journalist and a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who was at Saturday’s protest.

“There was a time when the police helped these people to do their vigil. To criminalise such an established protest now is an attempt to intimidate the rest of the public,” he said.

Turkey in July lifted a two year-long state of emergency during which 150,000 civil servants were purged and 77,000 people suspected of links to a failed coup in 2016 were charged.

But opponents say Erdogan’s new executive presidency and a counter-terrorism law passed last month equips him with sweeping powers to stifle opposition.

Soylu said on Monday that authorities blocked the sit-in because participants were “trying to create victims through motherhood and mask terrorism through that victimisation.”

At a news conference in Istanbul, the group denied links to any militant group and pointed out Erdogan, when he was prime minister in 2011, met them and pledged support.

They also vowed to continue their protest.

“Nobody is using us. Nobody has made us come here,” said Hanife Yildiz, whose son Murat went missing in police detention in 1995.

“I handed over my son to the state and I haven’t gotten him back since.”

‘REPEAT OF THE 1990s’

The silent vigils of Saturday Mothers began as a protest against what they say was the disappearance of relatives in police detention and extrajudicial killings in the 1990s.

At the time, when conflict with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was at its height, such disappearances and killings were common, mostly in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Emine Ocak, who was briefly detained on Saturday, was among those at the first sit-in after her son Hasan Ocak went missing following clashes with police in Istanbul in 1995.

Soylu rejected that Ocak had gone missing in detention and said he was a member of an ultra leftist terrorist organisation and that he was killed after a row within the group but the Saturday Mothers were trying to put the blame on the state.

Emine Ocak’s picture – the image of a white-haired elderly woman shouting as she was taken by riot police – went viral across Twitter. Her son Huseyin, Hasan’s brother, told Reuters police intervention was unexpected.

“There seems to be a new security approach in the state that very much resembles the one in the 1990s,” Huseyin Ocak said.

“I was there at the meeting with Erdogan on Feb 5, 2011. He said, ‘Your problem is my cabinet’s problem.” “He also promised to find our relatives”, he added.

State investigations have shed light on some of the cases pursued by the Saturday Mothers. A 2011 parliament report found that Cemil Kirbayir, who went missing during a 1980 coup, died under torture.

“Since 1995 we have continued our rightful and silent resistance,” Cemil’s brother Mikail said. “You will not be able to remove us from that square.”

Turkey will retaliate against a U.S. decision to impose sanctions on two senior ministers over the imprisonment of Pastor Andrew Brunson, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

Washington sanctioned Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu over the pastor’s detention. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the two men played leading roles in his 2016 arrest and later detention.

“We call on the U.S. administration to walk back from this wrong decision,” a statement by the Turkish foreign ministry said, calling Washington’s action a “hostile stance”.