A man who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight against British troops could have his jail term increased after the Attorney-General lodged an appeal against his “undluly lenient” sentence today.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, decided to refer the 4-and-a-half-year sentence passed on Sohail Qureshi this month to the Appeal Court.

Qureshi, 30, a dentist, who speaks five languages, admitted a range of terrorism offences after a rare legal procedure that led to his being told in advance what the maximum sentence would be if he pleaded guilty and avoided a full trial.

He was the first person to be convicted for the offence of preparing to commit terrorist acts, under Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.

Prosecution lawyers and the police were furious that an Old Bailey judge had imposed what they felt to be a light sentence. It was believed that had Qureshi been convicted after a trial he would have been jailed for between 10 and 15 years.

Counter-terrorism officials were particularly concerned that the sentence had sent out a signal that the offence of preparing for terrorism was a minor one. The maximum term in the legislation is life imprisonment.

Qureshi, from Forest Gate, East London, was stopped at Heathrow in October 2006 as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan with £9,000 cash and military equipment in his luggage and combat manuals on a computer hard drive.

Searches at his home recovered pictures of Qureshi, who was born in Pakistan, carrying an array of assault rifles on previous visits to the region.In an e-mail to a friend that was retrieved from his computer he said: “Make dua [pray] that I will kill many.” He said he was going to take part in “an operation”.

Qureshi had also been in e-mail contact with Samina Malik, a shop assistant at a Heathrow airside branch of WH Smith, to ask about security arrangements.

Malik, who called herself the Lyrical Terrorist on websites, was tried separately from Qureshi and given a nine-month suspended sentence for possessing items useful to terrorists. Her link to Qureshi was not disclosed to the jury in her trial.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General said: “After careful review the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland has decided to refer the sentence given to Sohail Qureshi to the Court of Appeal as she considers the sentence to be unduly lenient. It will now be for the Court of Appeal to decide at a future hearing whether or not to increase the sentence.”

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