A COURT was right to find a Scots student guilty of terrorism charges, appeal judges were told yesterday.
A COURT was right to find a Scots student guilty of terrorism charges, appeal judges were told yesterday.
Mohammed Siddique, 23, is trying to overturn convictions which led to jail sentences totalling eight years.
A trial in October 2007 heard how material was seized from his lap-top and his home in Alva, Clackmannanshire, which glorified al Qaida and gave information on weapons and explosives.
Siddique also told fellow students at Glasgow's Metropolitan College he wanted to be a suicide bomber and showed them pictures of beheadings.
He has always claimed he is innocent and motivated only by curiosity about the situation in the Middle East.
At the start of the appeal hearing, defence QC Donald Findlay dismissed the allegedly damning internet material as "merely propaganda" and claimed terrorist sympathies were not enough to convict under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Siddique had to be directly linked to an act of terrorism to be guilty, claimed the lawyer.
Yesterday advocate depute Derek Ogg QC, for the Crown, told Lord Osborne, sitting with Lords Reid and Clarke, about Siddique's stated intention to be a suicide bomber.
"We don't have to wait until he sets off from his flat for George Square," he said. "The relevant material in his possession was enough."
The trial in Glasgow in October 2007 heard Siddique told fellow students he sympathised with al Qaida.
Siddique also set up websites urging others to commit terror acts and showing how to make and use explosives. Much of the propaganda was aimed at English speakers.
He was arrested in April 2006 as he waited at Glasgow Airport to board a plane to Pakistan.
Siddique was found guilty of three breaches of the Terrorism Acts and a breach of the peace between March 2003 and the day of the raid.
The hearing continues.
