East London man jailed for attempting to buy grenade to "blow up" police station

AN UNEMPLOYED man of Bethnal Green, east London, who said to have wanted to “commit mass murder” and kill his own family, has been jailed for nine years after trying to buy a grenade from an undercover officer.

Mohammad Chowdhury, 24, was arrested during a sting operation in February when he paid £300 to an undercover police officer for what he believed to be a real grenade. 

Sentencing him on Monday (21), Judge Philip Katz QC said Chowdhury did not have a “fixed plan” and that throwing the grenade at a police station was one possibility, adding that the man intended to cause serious damage or endanger life with the weapon by detonating it in public at a future point.

Judge Katz also said he had not been politically or religiously radicalised, and the attempted purchase of the hand grenade did not have a terrorist connection but he had developed an “unhealthy interest in explosives and dangerous weapons”.

Following his arrest in February, officers had seized a number of digital devices from his home that reportedly showed that Chowdhury had downloaded and viewed a number of documents containing recipes for making explosive substances and information on how to create explosive devices.

Officers had also recovered a number of hand-written notes at Chowdhury’s address, which included details of chemicals, explosives and diagrams copied from the manuals he downloaded onto his phone, a media report said.

In a note saved on his mobile phone, he said to have written about wanting his family dead, “feeling homicidal”, wanting to “commit mass murder and kill myself before the police get a chance to arrest me”.

The man was charged with various offenses relating to the attempted purchase of the grenade and the possession of the documents found on his phone. While in prison awaiting trial, Chowdhury reportedly spoke to family members when it emerged that his intended target for the grenade was a police station.

“If I would have got that I would have chucked it at the station, innit, I don’t care,” Independent quoted Chowdhury in a report, referring to his attempt to purchase the grenade.

Chowdhury had previously pleaded guilty to four counts of possessing documents likely to be useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism, but was not charged with planning a terror attack himself.

Defence barrister Michael Skelley reported to have claimed that Chowdhury had been assessed for a learning disability and autism but never received a full diagnosis. He wanted to be a spy like James Bond and at the time of the offense, he was unemployed and isolated, Skelley said.