A dentist who was stopped as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan with military equipment and £9,000 cash was jailed yesterday for 4½years for terror offences.

Sohail Qureshi, 30, is believed to have been travelling to Afghanistan to join Mujahidin forces linked to al-Qaeda to fight against British and American troops in the region.

Several pictures from computers and discs that were recovered by police showed Qureshi on previous trips to the region posing with assault rifles, including an American M16.

In an e-mail to a fellow Islamist radical, sent shortly before his planned departure, he wrote: “Make dua [prayers] that I will kill many. Revenge, revenge, revenge.”

Qureshi was also in regular e-mail correspondence with Samina Malik, the self-styled “Lyrical Terrorist”, who was convicted of terrorist offences last month. Malik, 23, who worked at Heathrow as a shop assistant, supplied him with details of security measures at the airport.

The dentist, who appeared at the Old Bailey shaven-headed and bespectacled with a neatly trimmed goatee beard, pleaded guilty to preparing to engage in acts of terrorism and possessing items useful to terrorists. Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, described terrorism as “an affront to civilisation” but said that the offences were at the lower end of the scale.

Police and prosecution sources raised concerns that the judge had imposed an apparently lenient sentence in the first conviction, under the Terrorism Act 2006, for preparing for the commission of terrorist acts. Allowing for 14 months spent on remand and the normal remission of half his sentence, Qureshi will be freed from prison in just over a year.

He had been under observation for several weeks before he was arrested while boarding a flight to Islamabad on October 18, 2006. Police found a night-vision scope, medical supplies, two extendable metal batons, several mobile phones, two sleeping bags and two rucksacks in his luggage. He had a library of material downloaded to a portable computer hard drive, including US and Canadian military manuals that outlined urban warfare tactics.

Qureshi had £1,150 in his wallet and was carrying six envelopes containing £7,590. Further investigation of Qureshi’s financial activities revealed that he had been transferring money to people in Peshawar, on the Afghan- Pakistan border, for up to two years.

Examination of a computer at his home in Forest Gate, East London, led to the retrieval of his e-mail exchanges with Malik, who wrote poems about beheading and jihad and was given a nine-month suspended sentence for possessing terrorist material.

Her case attracted widespread publicity, with commentators and Muslim community leaders protesting that she had been prosecuted for a “thought crime”. Her connection with Qureshi and the evidence of his planned activities could not be publicised at the time because of the danger of prejudice to his case.

Qureshi also wrote an eight-page farewell letter in which he said:

“If I am to become a shaheed [martyr] then cry not and celebrate that day as if you celebrate a happy occasion.”

He had a British passport but was born in Pakistan and spent most of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as an engineer. The youngest of five children, he spent seven years in Russia, where he took a degree in dentistry. He moved to Britain in 2004, but his qualifications were not recognised fully, and he found work as a dental assistant.

Jonathan Sharp, for the prosecution, said: “Sohail Qureshi is a dedicated supporter of Islamist extremism.”

Andrew Hall, QC, for Qureshi, said that there was a Walter Mitty element to the case. “This was a man who was in the habit of exaggerating, to a very significant degree, his contacts, his role, his importance.”

Peter Clarke, Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations at Scotland Yard, said that Qureshi was a trained and committed terrorist who had contacts with al-Qaeda dating from the 1990s. “Although we do not know his exact plans, it is likely that coalition forces, possibly in Afghanistan, were his intended target,” Mr Clarke said. “He was no amateur. He had a cover story; he researched airport security; he tried to cover his tracks. Samina Malik featured in this investigation. She was arrested after her details were found on Qureshi’s computer. She was well aware of Qureshi’s violent extremist views and was happy to provide him with advice on security measures at the airport.”

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