‘Fourth ISIS Beatle’ Aine Davis is jailed for eight years after being found guilty of terrorist offences including possession of a firearm and funding terrorism
Aine Leslie Davis, 39, was deported from Turkey last August after serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for joining IS.
Upon his arrival at Luton Airport, he was arrested by British counter-terrorism police and charged with three offences.
Last month he admitted possession of a firearm contrary to section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and two charges of financing terrorism between 2013 and 2014.
His conviction came after Judge Mark Lucraft rejected Davis’ last-ditch effort to have his case dismissed in March, as well as a failed attempt to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal.
Aine Leslie Davis, 39, was deported from Turkey last August after serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for ISIS membership
Last month, Davis (seen bottom right of this image) admitted possession of a firearm contrary to Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and two charges of financing terrorism between 2013 and 2014.
Davis’ legal team had demanded that the prosecution be dropped because he could not be tried twice for the same crime.
He also accused British authorities of “collusion” with Turkish counterparts in his deportation in a failed attempt by then Home Secretary Priti Patel to arrange his onward extradition to the US, where two other IS Beatles were being tried.
Ms Patel is said to have ‘begged’ the US to take on the Davis case, according to legal arguments heard at the Old Bailey in March.
Davis’ barrister Mark Summers KC claimed that lawyers in the United States did not want to prosecute Davis ‘because the evidence was that there were only three members and not four members of that cell’.
The lawyer also claimed Ms Patel was entering ‘Alice in Wonderland territory’ when she called authorities in the US and begged them to take Davis’ case.
Mr Summers said: ‘The irregular personal involvement of the Home Secretary in trying to persuade a foreign country to prosecute a British national is nothing short of extraordinary.’
But in a ruling published following Davis’ guilty pleas, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Mr Justice Chamberlain and Lord Justice Fulford, sided with Judge Lucraft and dismissed the defense claims.
Their ruling said: ‘We agree with the judge that there is a significant lack of evidence of misconduct on the part of the then Home Secretary and relevant officials of the United Kingdom.’
The senior judges added that the “short-lived and discounted proposal” to prosecute Davis in the US was “irrelevant to his alleged unlawful deportation” and that any discussions about it were “no more than a footnote in the history of the return of the applicant. to Great Britain’.
Davis has always denied being connected to the cell of The Beatles – so named because of their British accent – who tortured and beheaded Western hostages in Syria.
Two members of the IS Beatles, British El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, are serving life sentences in the US.
The third Beatle, Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, who was believed to have featured in shocking videos of IS’s beheadings of a number of prisoners, was killed in a drone strike in 2015.
Davis’ terrorist activities date back to 2013, when he left his home in London and joined the armed conflict in Syria, having previously converted to Islam and spent time in the Middle East.
The evidence was largely uncovered through his communications with his then wife, mother of two, Amal El-Wahabi, 36, who remained in north London and lived on benefits.
He then enlisted her in a scheme to send him cash by tricking her boyfriend Nawal Masaad, 36, into acting as a courier with the promise of €1,000.
Ms Masaad, from Holloway, north London, was stopped at Heathrow airport on January 16, 2014 as she was about to board a flight to Istanbul with €20,000 stuffed into her tights.
The prosecutor alleged that the money raised in Britain was intended to support Davis’ terrorist cause in Syria.
After El-Wahabi’s arrest in London, police discovered a stash of terrorist propaganda allegedly left behind by Davis when he went to Syria.
Her cell phone contained a photo Davis sent in November 2013 in Syrian forests with a man holding a Kalashnikov rifle.
Davis told his wife, “Don’t show this to anyone but Yuyu. (sic). I mean it.’
He sent another photo of himself posing with thirteen others in military fatigues, all with their weapons raised.
When asked by El-Wahabi if he was doing anything exciting, Davis said he was just “on point,” which is presumably a reference to guard duty.
The court heard it was clear Davis – who had been convicted of drug possession and gun possession – had gone to Syria to fight under the black flag of IS and was engaging in martyrdom.
El-Wahabi gave evidence at her trial, claiming Davis was “always there” for her and had left the country “to get away from everyone and look for work.”
He was unhappy in London because of “the drugs, the influence of friends he has around him, the police constantly targeting him,” she said.
She added: ‘With him, his problem is that he is always being watched.’
Following the Old Bailey trial in 2014, El-Wahabi was found guilty of financing terrorism and jailed for 28 months, while Ms Masaad was cleared of wrongdoing.
El-Wahabi was the first person convicted of financing terrorism in Syria.
In November 2015, Davis was arrested along with others in Istanbul after being found with a forged travel document and later jailed for IS membership.