Man retweeted praise of terrorist for more followers, jury told

Ajmal Shahpal is on trial at Birmingham Crown Court

A man who retweeted praise of a terrorist on Twitter told a jury he only did it "to have more followers".

Ajmal Shahpal said he did not believe the killer of a French teacher was "as brave as a lion".

Prosecutors say he encouraged others to carry out terror attacks and posted an image of a victim's severed head on his social media account.

The 41-year-old, of Birkin Avenue in Radford, Nottingham, is on trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

He denies two counts of encouraging others to commit, prepare, or instigate acts of terrorism and two alternative charges of the same offence being reckless as to whether such acts would be encouraged.

The court heard Mr Shahpal is originally from Pakistan and passed a taxi exam and studied for a diploma in English and business management after coming to the UK in 2009.

Assisted by an Urdu interpreter, he denied pretending to have a poor understanding of English to try to escape responsibility for his tweets.

Dan Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, asked the defendant why he tweeted in praise of the killer of Samuel Paty, a French teacher beheaded in an attack in October 2020.

After the defendant accepted that Mr Paty did not deserve to die and that the teacher's killer was not "as brave as a lion" - contradicting statements in one of his retweets - Mr Pawson-Round said: "Why did you retweet a tweet saying all these things then?"

'Copied and pasted'

In response, Mr Shahpal said: "As I have already told you, the reason behind this was just to have some more followers.

"At the time when I retweeted it, that picture [of a severed head] wasn't fully open at that time on the feed of Twitter.

"So at the time I did not know what picture it was that I was retweeting."

He added: "What I have read, it did not say that his chopped off head was lying on the floor.

"A friend of mine who set up this account for me, he told me that if you do this, you are going to get more followers."

Asked about another tweet that called for rapists to be stoned to death, Mr Shahpal said it did not accord with his beliefs and he had "just copied and pasted" a message written in English "because the issue was ongoing" in Pakistan.

He also told the court he did not properly read a tweet calling for people who insult Islam to be "killed immediately".

"I didn't have a clue," he said. "My English is not that good. I just copied and pasted."

The trial continues.