Aine Davis was also sentenced at the Old Bailey for fundraising after he tried to get his wife to send him 20,000 euros (£17,460).
A British man who
spent two years with Islamic State in Syria and knew the British militant
dubbed Jihadi John, has been jailed for carrying a weapon for terrorist
purposes.
Aine Davis was
also sentenced at the Old Bailey for fundraising after he tried to get his wife
to send him 20,000 euros (£17,460).
Intelligence
services once believed that Davis was part of the "IS Beatles" who
tortured and killed hostages.
The sentence was
made up of five-and-half-years for the firearms charge, and
two-and-a-half-years for two fundraising charges - all of which are offences
under the Terrorism Act.
Davis was also
given two years on licence after his sentence.
He was deported to
the UK in August 2022 after serving a prison sentence in Turkey for terrorism
offences.
Aine Davis was
born in west London in 1984. By early adulthood he had a string of drug
convictions, and he was jailed in 2004 for possessing a firearm.
He became a Muslim
and sometimes called himself Hamza, although he still has the name Aine
tattooed on his left arm.
In 2007 he spent
time in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In 2008 and 2009 he visited Yemen, and he
travelled to Egypt in 2009 and 2011.
He had become a
committed Islamist extremist and attended the same West London mosque as
Mohamed Emwazi, who went on to be the executioner in the so-called
"Beatles" gang and became known as Jihadi John.
At one point Davis
was suspected by the intelligence agencies in the UK and the US of himself
being a member of the "Beatles" kidnap and murder gang although
that's no longer thought to be the case.
Davis's barrister,
Mark Summers KC, told the court the defendant's "early life was difficult
and challenging", and religion had been his way out.
He said his client
felt it was his "religious obligation" to join the conflict in Syria
after seeing images of the war in the country, and "he accepts that was
terrorism".
"The reality
that he found when he arrived in Idlib was profoundly different from anything
he would have ever imagined," said Mr Summers, adding his client had been
naïve.
He added Davis
wished to apologise to the people of Syria, his own family, and the court.
Passing sentence,
Judge Mark Lucraft KC said: "From the messages and images you sent to your
wife it is clear you had been with fighters in Syria and that you were not
there for lawful purposes."
He added: "It
is submitted on your behalf that there is much that has been said about you in
the media and elsewhere that is not supported by evidence before the court.
"I make it
clear I am sentencing you for the offences on the indictment and for nothing
else."
Media caption,
Watch: Judge Mark
Lucraft KC passes sentence on Aine Davis
In February 2012
Davis left the UK with Alexanda Kotey, another friend from the mosque, and two
other men who later died as foreign fighters in Syria.
They travelled to
Turkey where Kotey was denied entry, but Davis was not. For reasons that are
not clear, Aine Davis was subsequently banned from Turkey in March 2012.
In August 2012
Alexanda Kotey managed to get to Syria with Mohamed Emwazi.
Kotey is currently
serving a life sentence in the United States for the torture and murder of
American hostages there.
He admitted being
a member of the kidnap gang that became known by their captives as the
'Beatles', a name they were given because of their British accents.
Davis himself
returned to Turkey in July 2013, and after crossing the border into Syria spent
the next two years with the Islamic State group, but he has always denied being
one of the 'Beatles' himself.
In August 2014
Davis's wife Amal El-Wahabi, who he had met at a west London mosque, was found
guilty of trying to send him the 20,000 euros (£17,460) for the purposes of
terrorism.
In November 2015
Davis crossed the border from Syria back into Turkey using a false passport. He
planned to attend a meeting with other senior jihadists, possibly - according
to Turkish court documents - to plot an attack in Turkey.
He was arrested by
Turkish police in a villa in a luxury coastal complex in Silivri rented by
Kamran Faridi, an FBI asset.
That same day
Mohamed Emwazi (Jihadi John), was killed by a drone strike in Syria.
Davis was jailed
in Turkey for being a member of a terrorist organisation and after his release
was deported to the UK and immediately arrested.
On 10 October this
year he pleaded guilty to possessing a weapon for terrorist purposes and two
charges of fundraising.
He had fought a
lengthy legal battle to get the charges dismissed, arguing at the Old Bailey
and the Court of Appeal he had already spent time in prison in Turkey for
similar offences.
In a statement
following the sentencing, Cdr Dominic Murphy, who leads the Met Police's
Counter Terrorism Command, said he hoped the case would send the message that
"we will relentlessly pursue and seek to prosecute anyone involved in
terrorism both in the UK and abroad, no matter how much time has passed".
Was there a fourth
'IS Beatle'?
As recently as
October 2020 US prosecutors in a press release had still been talking about
four Islamic State Beatles, and although he was not named, Davis was the
suspected fourth man.
However, the
American government never sought to extradite him, despite then Home Secretary
Priti Patel in July 2022 having discussed with the US deputy attorney general
whether Davis could be put on trial in the United States.
Documents that
emerged during his appeal suggest prosecutors in the Southern District of New
York were still hoping to bring a case against Aine Davis as late as July 2022.
Now Mohamed Emwazi
is dead, and Alexanda Kotey and a third Briton El Shafee Elsheikh are serving
life sentences in the US. But that only makes three "Beatles".
Now it is less
clear if there was a fourth Beatle. In public at least, exactly what Davis did
in his two years with the Islamic State group remains something of a mystery.
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