Trevor Mulindwa: Londoner jailed for six years for attempting to join al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab

Trevor Mulindwa, a 21-year-old from Mitcham, London has been jailed for six years over terror offences after he attempted to fly from London to Mogadishu to join the al-Qaeda-linked Jihadi group al-Shabaab.

Mulindwa was convicted under the terrorism act for attempting to join the Somali terror group after he became radicalised following a conversion in 2013. Al-Shabaab has been engaged over the past years in a range of terrorist atrocities in Somalia and Kenya and have also in the past planned attacks against the UK.

He was stopped by police when he was on his way to Mogadishu in 2013. When he was arrested, his phone was seized and on it were six films, all with a terrorist theme; some were news documentaries, others showed al-Shabab propaganda. One film concerned a UK jihadi who went to join a terrorist group in Syria.

Commander Richard Walton of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command (SO15), said: "A sentence of six years demonstrates the seriousness with which the whole of the criminal justice system takes this offence.

"We are now faced with the challenge of radicalised British nationals attempting to join many different terrorist groups in a variety of different countries," he added.

Al-Shabaab operates predomintly in Somalia, where it has thrived within the country's protracted civil war. It has projected its power from Somalia to Kenya.

The militant group has been drawn to Britons seeking to wage jihadis. Thomas Evans a 25-year-old from Buckinghamshire village of Wooburn Green known as the 'White Beast', was killed in Kenya in 2015 and was believed to be among 50 British people to have joined the terror group at the time.