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Two Stoke-on-Trent terrorists have been jailed for life after plotting to attack police and military targets in the UK.

Mohibur Rahman and Tahir Aziz were influenced by last year's lorry attack in France when they plotted the Lee Rigby-style assault.

But their terror plan was busted by MI5 which arrested them and seized a pipe bomb, meat cleaver and gun last summer.

Investigators had kept the men under surveillance and they were photographed walking through fields off Bank Hall Road, in Burslem, just five days before their arrest last August.

Rahman, aged 33, of High Lane, Burslem, and Aziz, aged 38, of Wulstan Road, Cobridge, were yesterday convicted alongside two Birmingham men of preparing a terror attack.

Now Rahman has been ordered to serve at least 20 years in prison and Aziz 15 years behind bars.

Birmingham next-door neighbours Naweed Ali and Khobaib Hussain as well as Rahman refused to leave Belmarsh Prison for their sentencing hearing today.

Their four-month trial has taken place during the latest London and Manchester terror attacks.

Mr Justice Globe told the Old Bailey: "These attacks demonstrate in stark form the carnage that can be created by different types of terrorist attack which can be carried out with a vehicle, explosives and loaded weapons.

"I am satisfied from the evidence and the jury verdicts that but for the intervention of the counter terrorism unit of West Midlands Police and the security services, there would have been not dissimilar terrorist acts in this country using at the very least the explosives and or one or more bladed weapons."

(Image: West Midlands Police/PA Wire)

The court heard Primark salesman and IS fanatic Aziz has previous convictions dating back to 1997 and had been jailed for five years for dealing heroin and cocaine. He only became radicalised after the breakdown of his marriage. It was said Aziz had bought a samurai sword from a Hanley sex shop for £20.

Rahman - who worked in a Stoke-on-Trent takeaway - has already been jailed for a terror offence after possessing an al Qaida propaganda magazine which contained bomb-making instructions.

Rahman met the two Birmingham gang members in prison and it has led to fears of radicalisation in UK prisons.