Cyber-jihadist Babar Ahmad slips back into Britain after 11yrs in jail

A Briton who was sentenced more than 12 years in jail after pleading guilty in the U.S. to setting up pro-Jihadi websites has been released and is back with his family in south London. Babar Ahmad is understood to have returned to the UK last week, in time to celebrate Eid with relatives. The 41-year-old spent 10 years in British prisons before losing a long battle against his extradition to the US. He was jailed there last July after pleading guilty to conspiracy and providing material to support terrorism by setting up the the websites, which were used to raise funds and recruit fighters for groups such as the Taliban.

It was a great joy to celebrate Eid with them for the first time in 11 years and to hug three of my nieces and nephews whom I had never met before.

Babar Ahmad

In a statement, his family said they were “delighted” to welcome him back. They added that they had been “heartened” by the judge’s description of Babar. Babar said he had been blindfolded, shackled and forcibly stripped naked when being extradited to the US but that, last week after being released, he had  been “treated with courtesy and respect” by officials. "11 years of solitary confinement and isolation in 10 different prisons has been an experience too profound to sum up in a few words here and now,“ Ahmad said. The Home Ofiice said as Ahmad is a British citizen he was entitled to return to the UK after serving his sentence. Ahmad received £60,000 in compensation after London’s Metropolitan Police admitted he had been injured during the 2003 raid on his house.

You can’t walk away from the fact that what you were doing was enabling Bin Laden to be protected in Afghanistan and to train the men who actually boarded the flights that drove into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Judge Janet Hall, as she sentenced Ahmad

Technology Babar Ahmad