Six Islamic terrorist  who plotted a bloody attack on an English Defence League rally have been given lengthy jail terms.

The men travelled to the rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in June last year armed with an arsenal of weapons including two shotguns, swords, knives, a nail bomb and a partially-assembled pipe bomb.

They were jailed for between 18 years and nine months and 19-and-a-half years.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC told the men: “How was it that you became involved in a crime of this gravity?

“At least part of the answer to that question must come in the tide of apparently freely available extremist material in which most of you had immersed yourselves.”

EDL leader Tommy Robinson and his deputy Kevin Carroll called out “God save the Queen” from the public gallery as sentence was passed.

Sobs could be heard from other observers, and shouts of ” Allahu Akbar”.

The judge said the extremist material was “not difficult either to obtain or share”.

He said: “In this case, it can only have served to reinforce the defendants’ resolve to behave in the hideous way that was planned”.

Jewel Uddin, 27, Omar Mohammed Khan, 31, Mohammed Hasseen, 24, Anzal Hussain, 25, Mohammed Saud, 23, and Zohaib Ahmed, 22, who are all from the West Midlands, admitted planning the attack at a hearing on April 30.

Khan, Uddin and Ahmed were jailed for 19-and-a-half years with an extended licence period of five years, and the other three were given jail terms of 18 years and nine months and an extended licence period of five years.

All the men will serve at least two-thirds of the jail terms before they can be considered for parole.

All of the men except Hasseen travelled to Dewsbury where an EDL rally was taking place on June 30 last year, ready to cause mass injuries and deaths.

The gang’s plan only failed because the event finished earlier than expected – they arrived at around 4pm when it was over shortly after 2pm.

The judge said that had the attack succeeded it could have sparked “a spiral of tit-for-tat violence”.

Two of the men, Khan and Uddin, were stopped by chance as they travelled back to Birmingham from Dewsbury after their bloody plan had failed.

A police officer pulled their Renault Laguna over because it looked old, and the car was flagged up as uninsured because the gang had entered the registration number incorrectly on an online form by one digit.

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