Sheffield man jailed for trying to join IS in Iraq
A Sheffield man who tried to go to Iraq to fight for Islamic State has been sentenced to three years in prison.
A Sheffield man who tried to go to Iraq to fight for Islamic State has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Shivan Azeez Zangana, 21, of Washington Road was one of two men found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism.
A court heart how Azeez had been fighting against IS with a Kurdish separatist group – and was then sent to the UK by his family to keep him safe.
But after falling in with a nest of rats'' here, he was turned by a fellow Kurd, asylum-seeker Aras Hamid, 27, and agreed to change sides and go with him to fight for IS.
The two men were discovered by police sleeping at the Al Noor Mosque in Birmingham on May 17, days after several of Azeez's worried relatives had called 999 with concerns about what he was planning.
He had fled his Sheffield home and bought a plane ticket from Gatwick to northern Iraq. Extremist material was later discovered on an iPad and iPhone he tried to post to the war-torn country.
Azeez dramatically collapsed in the dock at Kingston Crown Court after being jailed for three years, but was able to leave unaided after a few minutes.
Moments earlier Judge Peter Lodder QC had told him: I accept that you were radicalised by Hamid but the material retained on your electronic devices that you attempted to send unaided to Iraq reveals your own commitment.
Having seen you in the witness box it is clear you are not particularly vulnerable.''
While Azeez was arrested at the mosque, plan ringleader Hamid had items confiscated but was not detained.
He was discovered two days later hiding in a lorry on the A2 near Dover, Kent, while trying to smuggle himself out the UK. He also had a fake Bulgarian passport.
Hamid, of no fixed address, and Azeez, of Washington Road in Sheffield, were both convicted of preparing acts of terrorism at a trial last year.
Both men were also ordered to serve an extended period of 12 months on licence at the end of their prison sentence.
Azeez's lawyer, Anthony Barraclough, told Tuesday's sentencing hearing: In Birmingham and other parts of our country are terrorists who are part of a nest of rats.
Azeez, whatever he intended by the jury's verdict, did ... fight on our side in the Peshmerga.
It is said that Hamid is significantly responsible for the radicalisation of Azeez, whose vulnerability arises from being displaced ... from his position in the Peshmerga in Kurdistan.
Here is a young man who is vulnerable and falls in the nest.''