British Muslim who Denies Being ISIS ‘Beatle’ Jailed for 8 Years for Terrorist Offences

Undated file photo of Aine Leslie Davis, allegedly a member of ISIS terror cell know as The Beatles. Metropolitan Police/PA Media

LONDON—A British Muslim, who has always denied being a member of the Islamist death squad known as The ISIS Beatles, has been jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey for terrorist offences.

Aine Davis, 39, was deported from Turkey in August 2022 after being jailed for seven years for membership of ISIS.

In 2013 Davis—who was was convicted of drug offences and jailed in 2006 for possessing a firearm—changed his name to Hamza after converting to Islam and traveled to Syria to join ISIS.

He was identified in the media at the time as being a member of the ISIS Beatles cell—so-called because of their British accents—who were filmed torturing and beheading western hostages in Syria, but he has always denied the allegation.

Two members of the ISIS Beatles, British nationals El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, are serving life in jail in the United States while a third, Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, was killed in a drone strike in 2015.

Davis admitted during his trial in Turkey he had met Emwazi at a mosque in west London but denied they were friends or that he was in the ISIS Beatles.

He admitted three charges—possession of a firearm contrary to Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and two charges of funding terrorism between 2013 and 2014.

On Monday he was jailed for a total of eight years by the Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft, KC, who made a point of saying he was sentencing Davis for the offences he had admitted, rather than anything which had been “reported in the media.”

Propaganda Showed Davis’ ‘Commitment to Terrorist Cause’

But Judge Lucraft said he was convinced Davis had been in Syria in late 2013 and early 2014 “not for lawful purposes” and he said jihadist propaganda found on Davis’ wife’s phone showed his, “commitment to the terrorist cause.”

Mark Summers, KC, counsel for Davis, said his client accepted now he had proscribed to a “distorted” view of Islam which led him to travel to Syria in 2013.

But he went on to say: “He left not long after he went. He left in early 2014 and left unsettled and confused, wrestling with guilt having witnessed atrocities.”

In March, Judge Lucraft rejected Davis’s attempt to get the case thrown out and Davis then failed to get that decision overturned at the Court of Appeal.

Earlier this year, during legal argument at the Old Bailey, the court heard the former Home Secretary Priti Patel sought to arrange his onward extradition to the U.S.

The court heard Ms. Patel “begged” the U.S. to take Davis.

Lawyer Says There Were 3, not 4 ISIS Beatles

Mr. Summers claimed lawyers in the U.S. were not interested in prosecuting Davis, “because the evidence was there were only three members and not four members of that cell.”

He also claimed Ms. Patel veered into “Alice in Wonderland territory” when she phoned the U.S. authorities and he added, “The irregular personal involvement of the Home Secretary trying to persuade a foreign country to prosecute a UK national is frankly extraordinary.”

But the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Mr. Justice Chamberlain, and Lord Justice Fulford sided with Judge Lucraft and said, “We agree with the judge that there is a wholesale lack of evidence of misconduct on the part of the then home secretary and the relevant United Kingdom officials.”

One of the offences which Davis admitted to involved an attempt to get 20,000 euros in cash sent to him via Istanbul in January 2014.

The court heard Davis’s wife, Amal El-Wahabi, 36, persuaded a friend, 36-year-old Nawal Msaad, to courier the money to Istanbul for a fee of 1,000 euros.

But the cash, rolled up in a condom which was hidden in Ms. Msaad’s underwear, was found when she stopped at Heathrow Airport on Jan. 16, 2014 as she prepared to board a flight to Istanbul.

Ms. El-Wahabi was jailed for 28 months in Nov. 2014 for supplying money with, “reasonable cause to suspect that it would or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.”

But Ms. Msaaad was acquitted of the same offence after she convinced a jury she had been duped by Ms. El-Wahabi, an old school friend.

Photo of Davis Showed him Holding Kalashnikov

When Ms. El-Wahabi was arrested, police found on her mobile phone was a picture sent from Syria by Davis in November 2013 of him holding a Kalashnikov rifle.

He also sent another picture of him and 13 other armed men in military camouflage.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, the ISIS Beatles were involved in taking 26 hostages including U.S., British, French, Italian, Danish, German, Spanish, Swedish, Belgian, Swiss, and New Zealand nationals.

Kotey has been sentenced to life in the United States after pleading guilty to actions resulting in the deaths of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.

The group is also blamed for the deaths of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and Japanese journalists Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto.

Mueller’s family was told of her death in an email from ISIS, all others had videos of their beheading or the severed head or body released by ISIS.

Some beheading videos featured Emwazi.

PA Media contributed to this content.