UK barber jailed for sending Covid support funds to IS in Syria

A barber who sent thousands of pounds of UK pandemic business support funds to the Islamic State group in Syria was jailed for 12 years on Thursday.

Tarek Namouz, 43, who ran a barber's shop in west London, transferred at least £11,280 ($13,420) between November 2020 and May 2021 to organise terror attacks in Syria.

However, he boasted to a friend during a prison visit that he had sent £25,000 to Yahya Ahmed Alia, who he described as an "ex-fighter with Islamic State".

Namouz had received the money through Covid relief grants issued by his local authority to help businesses survive during the pandemic.

He was arrested in May 2021 and denied knowing the money would be used for terrorism, telling police he sent the funds to "help... the poor and needy in Syria".

But Namouz was last month found guilty after a trial of eight counts of entering into a funding arrangement for terrorism.

He was also convicted of two counts of possessing terrorist information based on videos found on his mobile phone.

Jailing him for 12 years, with a further year on extended licence, judge Peter Lodder said he had demonstrated a "commitment to terrorism" and planned to "re-establish a state run in accordance with extreme Islamic principles".

Namouz thanked the judge after he was sentenced, but in a subsequent courtroom outburst then yelled insults at police officers present.

"May Allah destroy you. We will meet on judgment day. You're a kafir (non-believer) and you will end up in hell," he told them.

Namouz was recalled to prison following his 2021 arrest to serve the rest of a 10-year sentence for raping an 18-year-old woman in a north London pub where he was the landlord in 2014.

He had been released in September 2019 on licence.