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Islam takes jihadi from life of petty crime to one of major felonies

Times:

FOR more than a decade Andrew Rowe travelled the globe in pursuit of the jihad, cutting his ties with his mother, wife and three children to wage his “holy war”.

He fought in Bosnia and Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and met al-Qaeda operatives in the Far East and Morocco. His odyssey ended yesterday at the Old Bailey, where a judge jailed him for 15 years for terrorist offences.

Born in West London of Jamaican parents, Rowe owed a debt to Islam which he believed had saved him at the age of 19 from a life of petty crime and drug abuse. A senior counter-terrorist offical said: “Rowe is truly an international warrior. Look at his travel pattern, for ten years or more he’s travelled the world in pursuit of his cause. He is a dedicated and committed jihadist and I have no doubt he has the potential to be very violent.”

Mr Justice Fulford said he had no doubt that Rowe’s personal jihad had reached the point where he was involved in terrorism, rather than guerrilla warfare, and was in the final stages of planning an atrocity.

The judge told him: “You were an adherent of an ideology which places the killing of Americans and their Christian and Jewish supporters as a matter of Muslim faith.”

The judge imposed consecutive sentences of 7½ years on Rowe for two offences of possessing mortar-firing instructions and a secret codebook for terrorist purposes. The code contained references to airports, aircrew, explosives and targets, giving rise to fears that Rowe’s target was Heathrow.