The cousin of two 16-year-old schoolgirls who left Britain to become jihadi brides is facing jail after setting up a ‘communications hub’ to help his friends get to Syria.
The friends, who called themselves the al-Britanni Brigade, became notorious for posting ISIS propaganda images on social media until two of them were killed in the fighting.
Images sent to Abdullah Ahmed Jama Farah, 20, showed them posing with a formula for the ‘square root of jihad.’
Jama, a chemistry student, was found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism by helping his friend, Nur Hassan travel to Syria and putting him in touch with a leading member of the group.
The judge, Michael Topolski, told Jama: ‘You have been convicted of a serious terrorist crime. Be in no doubt that there will be a sentence of imprisonment, the only question is how long.’
It can be disclosed that the leader of the group, Ahmed Ibrahim Halane, 21, known to his friends as Pie, because of his size, and Nur Hassan, known as Lady Legs, tried to return from Syria after the deaths of their friends.
They were banned from entering the country and instead they travelled to Copenhagen in Denmark where Jama travelled out to meet them before his arrest, security sources say.
The leader’s two sisters – Jama’s cousins – are still thought to be in Syria where they became a ‘jihadi brides’, only for their husbands to be killed in the fighting.
Salma and Zahra Halane, who had 28 GCSEs between them, were star pupils at Whalley Range High School before they travelled out to Syria in June 2014.
One member of the group, it was confirmed during the trial, is believed to have died as a suicide bomber in Iraq – the only Briton to do so.
Detectives see the group as the ‘advanced guard’ of British fighters who blazed the trail more than two years ago that dozens of others then followed.
They were unusual because they were better educated and cleverer than many who followed after them, one source commented.