A STUDENT who slipped into Iraq to fight alongside al-Qaeda militants has been jailed for 15 years in a warning to other Britons not to join groups fighting US-led forces.

Mobeen Muneef looked stunned and close to collapse as the sentence was passed at Central Criminal Court in Baghdad, watched by British and American officials.

The judge did not attempt to investigate claims that the 26-year-old religious studies student was smuggling weapons when captured by US Marines in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi.

Muneef was told that the sentence was simply for entering Iraq illegally and violating passport laws. An official from the Justice Ministry said: “This is a harsh message to would-be jihadis from abroad that if you are caught in terrorist activity you will get no leniency.”

Muneef admitted bribing a taxi driver to smuggle him over the border from Syria but denied any involvement with terrorism. Intelligence officials say that while he was living in Tooting, southwest London, he attended meetings of al-Muhajiroun, run by the banned cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed.

After Muneef was taken 450 miles under armed guard to an American military detention centre in the desert, his family and friends urged British ministers to intervene. Last night his older brother, Amir Muneef, said that the family was “extremely angry and upset at this outrageous verdict”.

“We are also disappointed that the Foreign Office has washed their hands of Mobeen. Why is he not in their custody rather than the Americans?” he said.

His sister, Naureen, said: “What has happened to my brother is simply unacceptable. My brother’s fundamental human rights have been breached and the British Government have been spectators in the whole process. To my family, it seems that we have paid a heavy price for the US-British special relationship.”

His lawyer, Vajahat Sharif, told The Times: “This is a ridiculous sentence for a visa violation. If the court wanted to make an example of him, then a year in Abu Ghraib prison would be more than sufficient. But Mobeen has now been in US custody for 500 days without a visit from any of his family.

“Iraq wants to prove it is a free country, but we know who is calling the shots in this case — the American military — which is why he gets 15 years.”

Muneef has not been told whether he faces a further trial charged with helping extremists, which could mean 25 more years in jail. If a judge decides that he took part in attacks, he could be sentenced to death.

Muneef has lodged an appeal, but if the sentence is upheld, Mr Sharif wants the British Government to ask for him to be returned home to serve his sentence. However, there is no prisoner exchange agreement between Iraq and this country and diplomats said that they could not intervene in what was a civil matter for the Iraqi courts.

Muneef’s lawyers are demanding to know why — if he is a prisoner of the Iraqis — he was taken back to a punishment wing at Camp Bucca, the US military detention centre known locally as “Iraq’s Guantanamo Bay”.

US officials said that Muneef was in their custody because he was still seen as “a threat to security”. American military commanders have refused to say if they intend to take separate legal action against Muneef. Since his arrest Muneef has been permitted to send one censored letter home and has complained to Red Cross visitors that he has been abused by US interrogators.

Muneef’s supporters believe that Britain let him remain in US custody so that he would be unable to claim protection from English courts.

Now he has been convicted of an Iraqi offence, he is beyond any UK lawyer’s reach. Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, which represents the family, said: “He has been thrown to the dogs apparently for no other reason than to make an example of him.”

Adam Price, the defence spokesman for Plaid Cymru, said that it was disturbing for a Briton to be jailed so long for a passport offence.

Muneef left home at 19 to go backpacking and for the past four years has been on an Islamic studies course in Damascus. From there he says that he travelled to Iraq to help a Baghdad charity.

On December 7, 2004, he was seen by a Marine patrol passing weapons over a wall to a militant group holed up in Ramadi, the heartland for foreign recruits to terror groups. Captain Brad Gordon told The Times that Muneef was seen handling a pistol and four AK47s. When the patrol closed in, he tried to escape as militants gave covering fire. He was allegedly carrying a fake Iraqi ID card and traces of explosives were on his hands.

At least eight men from Britain have died in Iraq in the insurgency, including three in suicide attacks on coalition troops.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who filmed himself murdering the Liverpool engineer Kenneth Bigley, has boasted about British recruits who have joined his “foreign legion”.

British jihadis studying in Damascus have previously set out on suicide missions. One was Asif Hanif, 21, from Hounslow, West London, who detonated his suicide belt in an Israeli nightclub in 2003, killing himself and three others.

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