![[Freelance]](../gif/fl3H.png)
Six deny plot to attack member Adil Raja
SIX MEN have denied plotting to attack London Freelance Branch member Adil Raja. Adil's whose house was burgled on 24 December and his colleague Mirza Shahzad Akbar was assaulted at home on the same morning.
Adil Raja on his YouTube channel
At the Old Bailey on 17 July Karl Blackbird, of Bedworth in Nottinghamshire, Clark McCaulay, of Coventry, and Louis Regan and his father Mark Regan, both of Birmingham, denied conspiracy to assault Adil and occasion him actual bodily harm.
Blackbird, the Regans and Liam McGarry, of Warwick, denied the same charges in relation to Mirza Shahzad Akbar.
A seventh man, Dylan Martin, for whom no address was reported, denied charges of attempted arson on Akbar's home in a later attack and possession of a revolver.
Blackbird, McGarry, McCaulay and the Regans are due to be tried on 12 January 2027 at Nottingham Crown Court; and Brammer and Martin face trial there on 8 March.
The prosecution told the judge that the defendants were allegedly “hired thugs” and that the attacks had been “orchestrated”. But when the judge asked whether an application to increase sentences under the National Security Act 2023 had been dropped because the defendants did not know they were “acting on behalf of a foreign power” (§19), the prosecutor replied that this appeared to be the case.
All six were remanded into custody.
Two more men - Asid Afsar, from Birmingham, and Doneto Brammer, of London - are also charged in connection with the incidents and will enter pleas later, the Old Bailey court heard.
Six deny plot to attack Pakistani dissidents in UK BBC Nottinghamshire