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Britain convicts its first online-terror culprits
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Openshaw said Tsouli was a danger, even though "he came no closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard."
Tsouli had a clear link to then-leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike last year, Kohlmann said.
"He was acting like a travel agent for would-be suicide bombers, sending them straight to al-Zarqawi," said Kohlmann, a case consultant for London police.
Al-Daour, a 21-year-old, who prosecutors said hoped to study law, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years and biochemistry graduate Waseem Mughal, 24, got 7 1/2 years. All three had pleaded guilty to inciting others to commit acts of terrorism.
Tsouli had referred to receiving orders from al-Qaida leaders in an online exchange with Mughal, claiming "AQ" had asked him to translate a book into English, Ellison said.
Following searches of the group's computers, storage drives and DVDs, police said they had found extremist material that — if printed out and piled up — would stand thousands of feet high.
Videos recovered included footage of the beheading of Berg, a 26-year-old American contractor, killed in Iraq in 2004 and the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Pearl, the U.S journalist, in Pakistan.
The three were arrested in 2005 as part of a Europe-wide operation to break up an alleged terror cell, which prosecutors said was planning an attack. Arrests were made in Bosnia, Denmark and Britain.
United Arab Emirates-born al-Daour, Tsouli and British-born Mughal of Chatham also admitted charges of attempting to defraud banks and credit card companies.
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