Five students win terror appeal

"The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court."
From here

Now obviously there is some degree as to why Lord Phillips could not decide as to the intention of the students, however downloading extremist literature and then writing a letter to Ma and Pa saying you are off to go fight a holy war is a reasonable intention of what he was planning to do with such material.

We are however in the UK (not sure for however much longer) entitled to free speech and a library down the road from me happens to have a great collection of extremist texts in its possession. (bought with tax payers money I would assume as it is a public library)The student did decide not to go through with it in the end and ran back to Ma and Pa who had already alerted the police.

Imran Kahn the acting solicitor said ""It is a great thing to live in a country where the Lord Chief Justice takes the time from hearing important cases to see if a group of unknown students have been fairly convicted for reading the wrong kind of literature," he said."

Should you be convicted for reading the wrong literature? There are many religions that have weirdo beliefs, I know I have met them, the worst of all are the fundamentalists of any religion. However if you read such literature, decide to meet up with another group of weirdos who hold the same belief and then claim

"As I said when I was arrested, I do not, have not and will not support terrorism in any form against innocent people." Not too sure about that one really? So you were willing to go and join four other people who liked the idea of terrorism but now you denounce it?

""My prosecution was a test case under the 2000 Terrorism Act. Today's decision means no first year student can ever be prosecuted again under this Act for possessing extremist literature."

Does it though? Perhaps the terrorism act should be amended to extend to the possession of extremist literature that inspires terrorism?

As someone once said to me a long time ago "if I teach you how to build a gun, you can not hold me responsible for shooting yourself in the foot with it" - yes that's true, just because someone has extremist propaganda on their computer does not make them a terrorist, but when someone has extremist propaganda on their computer, plans to run away to Bradford to meet other like minded people and perhaps become a terrorist, but later doesn't want to.. it could be shown that there was some intention ... or at least in my opinion.