Ilford Extremist Jailed for Sharing ISIS Propaganda on WhatsApp
Shehroz Iqbal Busted for ISIS Video
Shehroz Iqbal, 29, has been slammed with an eight-and-a-half-year jail sentence after posting a chilling ISIS propaganda video to a WhatsApp group earlier this year. The footage, shared on 11 March with the alarming caption “Attack, attack,” was found on his phone when police stopped him for drug possession later that month.
Extremist Behaviour Caught on Camera
During his trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutor Kate Wilkinson branded Iqbal as a “volatile extremist” likely to act on his dangerous views. The video was filmed during a 90-minute session at Southbank’s Hayward Gallery, near Royal Festival Hall and Waterloo Bridge. Iqbal sent the clip to a WhatsApp group called From Dark To Light consisting of 22 associates.
Despite denying involvement in terrorism and Islamic State propaganda, the court heard Iqbal had also shared a 2015 ISIS video featuring a dead body — seen over 200 times on his Facebook page. When arrested in April, he blamed drug use for the social media posts and bizarrely claimed the Hayward Gallery video was just to show off his bike.
Dark Past and Failed Anti-Extremism Attempts
At sentencing, Judge Philip Katz QC revealed Iqbal was already on two suspended sentences for harassing synagogue members in Gants Hill. His record also includes shoplifting, threatening behaviour, driving offences, and repeated drug possession dating back to 2010.
Defence barrister Laurie-Anne Power said Iqbal was desperately “seeking approval” from his WhatsApp contacts and was “often ignored” by others. She added he had tried to get help from an anti-extremism programme, admitting: “I am sitting online all day and watching this material, and it is consuming me.”
Power explained that Iqbal turned to drug dealing after losing his carpet fitter job during the first COVID-19 lockdown — and was so clumsy he even kept voice memos of his drug chats.
Judge Unmoved by Claims of Change
Judge Katz wasn’t buying Iqbal’s story. He said the defendant’s attempts at anti-radicalisation “were not genuine” and accused him of manipulating authorities by saying “whatever you think suits you best at the time.”
“You blame your offending on everything from drugs to mental issues to your difficulties opening a bank account, and most ironically to you being the subject of racism. The irony being your own overt racism, some of it towards other Muslims.”
Iqbal’s sentence also covers supplying class A drugs and two separate drugs possession charges, marking a grim end to his troubled, extremist path.
