A teenage Islamist fanatic who idolized the Lee Rugby killers was caught in the street with a hammer and knife on his way to behead a British soldier, a court heard.

Brustholm Ziamani, 19, was stopped and found with the weapons wrapped inside an Islamic flag and had researched a series of military bases around London.

He had planned to behead a soldier in an echo of the soldier Lee Rigby killing and to hold the head up so he could be photographed, the Old Bailey heard.

He had earlier shown an ex-girlfriend the large hammer and 12 inch knife shortly before his arrest and told her he was planning a terrorist attack and would “kill soldiers”.

After his arrest he told a security officer at a police station that he had been on his way to “kill a British soldier at an army barracks,” prosecutor Annabel Darlow said.

“He stated that he was going to behead the soldier and hold his head up in the air so that his friend could take a photograph.”

Ziamani was arrested in August 2014 but had only converted to Islam in the spring of that year and was “swiftly radicalized”, the court heard.

In a letter recovered by the police, he waged war against the British government and wrote: “You want war, you got it. British soldiers heads will be removed and burned. U cannot defeat the Muslim we love to die the way you love to live.”

On the first day of his trial, the jury heard how Ziamani the two men who murdered Drummer Rigby just a year earlier, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were his “idols”.

Ziamani, of Camberwell, south east London, denies preparing an act of terrorism.

Ziamani told his teenage girlfriend in April last year that he wanted to die a martyr and that he had agreed with what happened to Mr Rigby.

He described killer Adebolajo as a “legend”, the court heard.

The girlfriend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, ended her relationship as a result of the conversation following which Ziamani threatened to “wipe her out”.

He went by the name Mujahid Karim on social media and in May last year posted on Facebook that Sharia Law was on its way to the streets of the UK.

He added: “We will get Dem kufar (non-beliveers) soon, we r soliders of Allah.”

He also posted an image of a T-shirt with the logo of the video computer game “Call of Duty”, which he later said referred to his duty to promote Islam by the sword of jihad.

He said he hated it when people called him a moderate Muslim or liberal.

He also played down the murder of Mr Rigby, posing in June: “Why are they acting like Lee Rigby’s death was the worst death ever. He just got run over n stabbed left right centre.

“I bet if n Englishmen did it they wont say nuffin or make a big deal over it but two muslim brothers run over dis kaffar n now makin a big deal.”

The trial continues.

Source:

The Telegraph