Three people charged in UK terror enquiry launched after Paris and Brussels attacks

Two men and a woman have been charged with terror offences as part of a police probe that followed the Paris and Brussels attacks. The trio, all from the Small Heath area of Birmingham, were arrested in on 14 and 15 April 2016.

Mohammed Ali Ahmed, 26, Zakaria Boufassil, 26, and Soumaya Boufassil, 29, were charged with terror-related crimes and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday 29 April.

Ahmed and Zakaria Boufassil are charged with the commission of offences abroad on or before July 7 2015. They are also charged with funding terrorism.

Ahmed and Soumaya Boufassil are charged with the preparation of terrorist acts between 1 January 2015 and 8 April 2016 as well as facing charges of intending to commit acts of terrorism, or assisting another to commit such acts, by collecting money.

Two other men arrested with the trio have been released on bail. Fazal Sajjad Younis Khan, 40, has been charged with the possession of CS spray and is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates' Court on Friday 13 May while a 59-year-old man was released on bail without charge.

Their arrests were made by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit which uses MI5 and local police intelligence and is based in Birmingham.

Earlier in April, assistant chief constable Marcus Beale, who leads the unit, said the arrests followed a probe by West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit (WMCTU), MI5 and other international partners including in Belgium and France.

"The arrests were pre-planned and intelligence-led. There was no risk to the public at any time and there is no information to suggest an attack in the UK was being planned," Beale said.

In an unrelated court case an east London man who sent 8,000 tweets promoting terrorist group Islamic State (Isis), including one with a link to one of their beheading videos, has been jailed for five years.

Mohammed Mohsin Ameen, 23, of Dagenham, pleaded guilty to five counts of encouraging terrorism and one count for dissemination of a terrorist publication at the Old Bailey.