A would-be suicide bomber was jailed for eight years yesterday after he was found guilty of a series of Islamist terrorism offences including amassing and distributing terrorist propaganda.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, a British-born Muslim, provided material on bombmaking, and set up websites with direct links to inflammatory magazines and threatened to become a suicide bomber.

The son of a shopkeeper, from Alva, Clackmannanshire, was sentenced for what was the first Islamist terrorism conviction in Scotland after a trial in Glasgow last month.

Fragments of recovered internet chat-room messages suggested strongly that Siddique had close connections with people planning clandestine terrorist operations and he was doing likewise.

At the High Court in Edinburgh he was convicted of two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000, one under the Terrorism Act 2006 and a breach of the peace.

The trial, which lasted nearly four weeks, was told how the computing student set up a series of websites with direct links to the magazines Muaskar al-Battar and Sout al-Jihad. Muaskar al-Battar, which translates as The Camp of the Sword that Cuts, featured information about survival techniques, guerrilla warfare and light and heavy weaponry.

A disc found under a carpet in Siddique’s home included footage produced by the official al-Qaeda media wing, according to an antiterrorism expert from the US. Other video footage that Siddique collected included film of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, people urging Muslims to join a jihad and perform suicide missions, and Taleban training videos.

Siddique made extremist claims to fellow students at Glasgow Metropolitan College, saying that he would “blow up” the city and how suicide bombers were doing a “good thing”.

Judge Lord Carloway told him: “It is clear from the evidence that you did not have this material because of some innocent curiosity.” He said that the jury was entitled to accept the evidence of Siddique’s fellow students, several of whom said that he intended to become a suicide bomber.

Siddique had been under surveillance by the security services for several months when he was detained at Glasgow airport on April 5 last year, when he was about to fly to Pakistan.

Donald Findlay, QC, for the defence, argued that his client had collected material that was “readily available” on the internet. He said that Siddique regarded himself as “proudly Scottish” and a Scottish Muslim.

Aamer Anwar, Siddique’s solicitor, said that he would appeal.

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