LONDON, 19 July 2007 — Four young British Muslims were yesterday jailed for a total of 22 years at the Old Bailey for their role in a protest outside the Danish Embassy in Sloane Street on Feb. 3, 2006 against cartoons depicting and satirizing the Prophet Muhammed.

Website designer Mizanur Rahman, 24, of Palmers Green; British Telecoms IT technician Umran Javed, 27, from Birmingham; and Abdul Muhid, 24, of Whitechapel were each jailed for six years for soliciting to murder after urging the crowd or carrying placards with threats, including “Bomb Bomb UK”; “Be prepared for the real holocaust”; “Osama is on his way”; and referring to British soldiers in Iraq: “We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad and them coming home in body bags.”

A fourth man, Abdul Saleem, 32, from Poplar in east London, was jailed for four years on a single charge of stirring up racial hatred at the protest in February 2006.

The sentences were handed out as a dozen or so supporters of the men sat in the public gallery. Outside the court building, however, there were some 50 or so ‘Islamist’ demonstrators, many of them women in full black burkas covered from head to toe. The latter’s venom in their message of hate against the British establishment could not have been more evident. They waved placards reading: “British Police Go to Hell” and “Muslims Under Siege.”

But the warning to the extremists of all colors and creed who want to spread messages of hate was loud and clear from Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions: “Terrorism attacks our way of life and incitement can make a very real contribution to it. We shall continue to take incitement very seriously and prosecute it robustly where there is enough evidence for us to do so.”

The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, said the words of the four convicted had been designed to encourage murder and terrorism; and that none of the placards or speeches mention the cartoons, which had never been published in the British media. “Everybody is entitled to freedom and protection under the law and no one is entitled to urge the perverted use of ideology to propagate destruction, distress and death,” he declared.

“The freedoms of speech and assembly have long been jealously guarded by our laws, but with freedom comes respect and responsibility — none of which was demonstrated by you and the hardcore of your fellow protesters, demonstrating in February last year. Six months after the London bombings you subjected the multicultural citizens of London to a constant barrage of hatred and intolerance through your thoroughly offensive placards and speeches by three of you,” the judge added.

The convictions arose from the aftermath of an incident when about 300 protesters marched from the Central London Mosque in Regent’s Park to the Danish Embassy in February last year after cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad were published in newspapers in Denmark and other European countries.

The men denied harboring extremist views and said they were simply following others rather than leading the protests.

Meanhwile, in another development yesterday, three Muslim men were arrested by Greater Manchester Police counter-terrorism officers under terrorism laws after receiving information about a “potential threat.” The three are being held at a police station in the Stockport Road district of Longsight, Manchester. A fourth man was detained under immigration laws.