LONDON: A British Pakistani woman hairdresser, charged for helping her husband in a bomb plot against the Jewish community in Manchester, was jailed on Friday for eight years. Shaista Khan, 38, born in Pakistan, became a fanatic within weeks of marrying car cleaner, a converted Muslim, Muhammad Khan, 33.
The couple planned to build a DIY bomb using chapati flour, hairdressing chemicals and a set of Christmas tree lights to launch a terror attack on the Jewish communities in Manchester.
According to the crown prosecution service, they also carried out reconnaissance missions on possible targets, including a synagogue. Moreover, Shaista used her home-based hairdressing business called ‘Sassy Hair Studio’ as a front to seek targets as part of a “personal jihad”.
Shaista, who pleaded not guilty, was convicted of three terrorism offences at Manchester Crown Court on Thursday. Her husband had earlier admitted a terror charge. The court heard that Shaista and her husband started reading and listening to al Qaeda-inspired propaganda after their wedding. The plot to bomb the Jewish community fell apart when police were called to a domestic incident — and Shaista’s brother told them Khan was a “home-grown terrorist”. Police raided their house and found DIY bomb-making gear, including ground-up fire lighters, safety goggles, a funnel, needles and syringes, electrical wires, Christmas tree lights, bulbs and a battery.
In her defence, Shaista said she was frightened of her husband, saying he used to watch videos of terror beheading and torture on his laptop. She said he told her she was “being brainwashed” by Hollywood and Bollywood movies, and banned her from seeing her favourite soaps. She claimed, “He said, ‘I’m not letting you watch people drinking and being influenced by people like that’.”
The court heard that Shaista, who had been married twice before, met Khan when he advertised for a wife “for this life and the next” on a Muslim dating site. He proposed three days after they first met and they married the next month. The court sentenced seven years and six months imprisonment to Muhammad Khan for conspiring a terrorism plot.
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
