Lucy Osborne et al., Daily Mail, November 10, 2014

A British ISIS suicide bomber who has killed eight people was previously jailed for saying gay people should be stoned and burned to death.

Former care worker and father-of-three Kabir Ahmed, 30, said he was prepared to sacrifice his own children ‘a hundred times for Allah’ in his last known interview before driving an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi police convoy.

He reportedly killed eight people and injured 15 others after blowing himself up in Iraq on Friday.

Just two and a half years earlier, he was the first person to be prosecuted in Britain under laws introduced in March 2010 that ban stirring up hatred due to sexual orientation.

Ahmed, who was allegedly brainwashed while studying at the University of East London, had been caught with two friends outside a mosque in Derby handing out leaflets that called for homosexuals to face the death penalty.

The police received hundreds of complaints about the leaflets which locals described as ‘terrifying’. Ahmed was jailed for 15 months, during which time he was given a further conviction for targeting gay people during a pride procession in Derby.

After serving his sentence, Ahmed abandoned his wife Nashira Arif, 28, and their three children 16 months ago to join Islamic group Jund al-Sham in Syria before switching his allegiance to IS.

It was also well known before he left the country that Ahmed had links to Anjem Choudary and the banned British terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun.

In one interview available online, the jihadi said he was ‘craving martyrdom’.

‘This is more important that my family. I would sacrifice my children 100 times for the sake of Allah,’ he said.

Yesterday, Ahmed’s family told the Mail that authorities in the UK could have stopped him murdering innocents by arresting him at the airport as he left for Syria 16 months ago.

Despite being known to the authorities as an extremist, he had been allowed through airport security last year to join jihadis.

Ahmed, who was known to have links to hate preacher Anjem Choudary, had been calling for terrorist atrocities against the West on Twitter and was being monitored by the US government.

Speaking from his brother Saghir Admed’s terraced house in Derby, one female family member said: ‘He died the day he left us.

‘We are very, very sad that we lost him. But if they had stopped him at the airport he would never have gone in the first place.’

His family are said to be moderate Muslims who were ‘heartbroken’ when he left. A woman at his brother’s house yesterday said they had no idea where he went.

‘He just left us and everybody knows we don’t have contact with him and we haven’t tried to contact him,’ she said.

Ahmed’s mother Nasreen Akhtar, 53, is said to have ‘suffered a huge loss’. Friends said she ‘had nothing to do with how Kabir turned out’.

Speaking in an online interview, Ahmed said it was British and American foreign policy in the Islamic world that had led him to extremism.

‘It wasn’t the videos, it wasn’t the lectures, it wasn’t the books that I was reading. What radicalised me was the Government.

‘The American government, the British government . . . and what they were doing to our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

On Friday, Ahmed–also known as Abu Sumayyah al-Britani–killed eight people in an IS suicide bomb attack. He is one of an estimated 500 British jihadis who have travelled to the Middle East to fight for the barbaric terror group.

The group said he drove eight tons of explosives into a group of Shi’ite Muslims in Baiji, northern Iraq. Those murdered included a senior military commander.

An internet message board shows Ahmed and Choudary had communicated online as recently as March, with Ahmed referring to the hate preacher as ‘my brother’.

Speaking from an internet cafe near his terror training camp in Idlib, North West Syria, this summer, he told an online radio show: ‘It’s really, really fun. It’s better than that game Call of Duty. It’s like that but it’s in 3D where everything is happening in front of you.’

A spokesman for the University of East London said it was unlikely that Ahmed had been radicalised while there, since he had only studied there for four months.

‘We can confirm that a Kabir Ahmed studied at UEL between September 2003 and February 2004. He spent barely four months here and that was a decade ago,’ the spokesman said.

‘If this were the same person as is being reported in the media, then we believe it highly improbable that he was either radicalised or brainwashed while at UEL, as has been suggested.

‘Considering the very short time that Mr Ahmed was with us, and that he was convicted of a hate crime almost a decade after leaving UEL, it would suggest that he chose his path away from our university.

‘Here at UEL, we have an excellent record of multi-faith and multi-cultural harmony and equality and diversity. We continue to work closely with the authorities to make sure that radicalisation is neither tolerated nor allowed any room at UEL.

‘If this were the same student, we would, nonetheless, extend our thoughts and condolences to his family at what for them will be a very difficult time.’

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘We are aware of reports of the death of a British national in Iraq and are looking into them.’

The Home Office said it would not comment on why Ahmed was allowed out of the country.