A former restaurant worker who plotted a terror attack on the Pride festival in London has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years. Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 29, from Luton, planned to kill members of the public at busy London locations including Madame Tussauds and on an open-top tour bus. In December 2018, he was acquitted of terrorism in 2018 after he was arrested with a metre-long samurai sword outside Buckingham Palace. He had been armed with the sword and shouted “Allahu Akbar” but his lawyer successfully convinced the jury that he had been trying to get himself killed by a police officer, rather than intending to hurt anyone else. However, a week after his release from remand following the acquittal, he posted online about the virtues of martyrdom and published an image of the police officer who had wrestled the sword away from him outside the Queen’s London residence, calling him a “cuck”. Those posts prompted an undercover operation by counter-terrorism officers, which would lead to Chowdhury being convicted of terrorism offences in February, little more than a year later. Chowdhury was given the life sentence at Woolwich crown court on Thursday. Appearing in court wearing a grey tracksuit and face mask, he was jailed for convictions of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts, collecting information likely to be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications. Sentencing, Judge Andrew Lees said he was satisfied that Chowdhury was dangerous and posed “a significant risk to members of the public of serious harm”. The judge said Chowdhury had revealed to officers his “devotion to the cause of violent Islamic extremism”. Over several months, four undercover officers befriended him and the former Uber driver turned chicken shop driver shared with them his plans to use guns, knives or a vehicle to cause murder and mayhem, leading to his arrest three days before Pride, which he had discussed attacking with a vehicle. He also bragged to them about deceiving the jury in 2018, seeming particularly proud of the ruse of shaving off his beard before going to court. He said that his intention had been to “whack” a soldier at the palace. Video from police interviews after his arrest showed that he initially cut a nonchalant figure, telling officers that it was all a misunderstanding fuelled by misguided suspicion over his interest in weightlifting and martial arts. During the time he was under surveillance, Chowdhury bought a BB gun, which was a replica Glock, and tried to acquire a real firearm. He also shared a graphic execution video with undercover officers via WhatsApp. At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, defence lawyer Simon Csoka QC suggested Chowdhury’s behaviour had been a “delayed teenage phase”, arguing that he had done “very little beyond talking” about potential attacks on “hypothetical targets”. He suggested that Chowdhury had displayed a “cooling off” in his interactions with undercover officers, and highlighted that he had not taken up their offers of opportunities in support of an attack. Csoka previously argued that the university drop-out was a “pathetic little man” and an “attention-seeker” who “talks and talks, but doesn’t do”. But prosecutors argued at trial that Chowdhury desired to “unleash death and suffering” on non-Muslims after being influenced by sermons from preachers like al Qaida’s Anwar al-Awlaki. Chowdhury told one undercover officer he was free to attack one million unbelievers if he was fighting for “the pleasure of Allah” and stressed the importance of an “ambush”, saying: “They shouldn’t know what hit them.” His sister Sneha Chowdhury, 26, who was convicted of one count of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism, is yet to be sentenced.