Scottish student gets 8-year jail sentence on terrorism charges

Photo: Scottish student gets 8-year jail sentence on terrorism charges

A Scottish college student who said he was going to become a suicide attacker after scouring extremist Islamic sites on the Internet was sentenced to 8 years in jail on Tuesday.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, was convicted in September of four terrorism offenses and also of causing a disturbance by telling fellow students he planned to become a suicide bomber.

Prosecutors said during the four-week trial that Siddique was watched by security agents for several months before he was arrested in April 2006 as he tried to board a flight from Glasgow to Lahore, Pakistan.

Siddique, from the town of Clackmannanshire in central Scotland, had stored and posted guides to bomb-making, guns and explosives on a network of Web sites, prosecutors said.

"It is clear from the evidence that you did not have this material because of some innocent curiosity," said the judge, Lord Colin Carloway.

Siddique faced a maximum term of 15 years for his offenses.