A Dutch courier ends up in London because he wanted to kill British Queen Elizabeth and former Prime Minister David Cameron. He also had advanced plans to travel to Syria to join Islamic State.
The 38-year-old Aweys S. comes from Somalia, but is in possession of a Dutch passport. He was arrested last year at Stansted Airport on May 23 when he wanted to fly to Istanbul and then further east.
According to the British justice, S. led a double life. He lived in Tottenham in the north of London. For the outside world he was a neat, silent, religious, zealous courier at DPD. His employer described him as ‘hard working and reliable’. But according to the public prosecutor, there was behind this façade of parcel deliveryman a man with an extremist agenda.
S. denies all allegations. The Somali Dutchman has a wife in Kenya and also a Somali woman in the Netherlands. He has children with both.
His terrorist plans came to light when the police discovered an encrypted chat with another Somali in Kenya. That chat was kept on the computer of this Abdirahman Idris Hassan. Hassan was arrested in September 2016 for terrorism.
With him, the Somali Dutchman discussed the options to kill the queen (‘the old woman’) and then Prime Minister Cameron. It was not the only terrorist idea. S. also had plans to murder orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill. The two Somalis discussed whether they would do that with bullets or fire. In addition, S. wanted to cause a bloodbath among football supporters of Tottenham Hotspur. With a small team, he wanted to empty AK47 machine guns at the football fans when they left the football stadium.
‘Amen brother’
In one of the outdated messages from Hassan to S., “May God give you a gift by killing David Cameron and the old woman Elizabeth.” S. concludes the chat with the words: ‘Amen brother.’
Hassan wanted to know if S. could get ammunition and weapons in the United Kingdom. S. estimated that he needed three to five people for ‘a bloody attack’ at the football stadium that could best be performed with automatic weapons.
S. then started looking for ways to get money. He walked out of benches with a talk about a renovation, but he got a lot of bone everywhere. In the end, Barclays Bank succeeded with a story that he was getting married to get a £ 10,000 loan. He also received a personal loan from his employer for ‘a visit’ to his wives in the Netherlands and Kenya. He transferred the bulk of that money to Raaqiya Hussain, a woman in Norway who wanted to travel with him to the Islamic State. Instructions for making explosives were found on her computers.
According to the prosecutor, S. was determined to give his life a terrorist follow-up. ,, He was so eager that he was willing to leave his life, his job and his family to fight for Islamic State in the front line. ”