A man once suspected of being a member of the Islamic State cell known as “the Beatles” has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in the UK. Aine Leslie Davis, 39, from west London, was arrested upon arrival at Luton airport last August after being deported from Turkey, where he served seven and a half years in prison over his membership of IS. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm contrary to section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and two charges of funding terrorism between 2013 and 2014, during a hearing at the Old Bailey. Davis, who appeared via video link from Belmarsh prison, faces sentencing on 13 November. Davis’s offences were largely uncovered through his communications with his then wife, Amal El-Wahabi, who stayed behind in north London. Davis, who used the name Hamza after converting to Islam, was born in the capital and spent time living in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2007. He met Wahabi at a London mosque and they became increasingly interested in Islam. In July 2013, he travelled to Syria but maintained regular contact with Wahabi by phone and internet. He went on to enlist her in a plan to send him cash by getting a friend, who was later cleared of any wrongdoing, to act as courier. Wahabi was later found guilty of funding terrorism and jailed for 28 months in 2014 – the first person to be convicted of funding terrorism in Syria. In November 2015, Davis was arrested with others in Istanbul after being found using a forged travel document and later jailed for IS membership. He has always denied being connected with the IS cell that tortured and beheaded western hostages in Syria. Two of the members, the British nationals El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, are now serving life sentences in US jails. The third, Mohammed Emwazi – also known as “Jihadi John” – was killed in a drone strike in 2015. Davis’s legal team claimed before his planned trial that the case should be thrown out because he should not be tried twice for the same offence. The British authorities were also accused of “conniving” with their Turkish counterparts in his deportation. It was said this was part of a failed attempt by the then home secretary Priti Patel to arrange Davis’s onward extradition to the US, where two of “the Beatles” – a death squad nicknamed for their members’ British accents – were tried. Davis has always denied being part of the cell. In legal argument, defence lawyer Mark Summers KC noted “the spectre” of suspicion around Davis’s involvement with the cell from 2014 onwards. It caused Davis to complain about mistreatment in his Turkish jail after he was interviewed about it by British intelligence officers, the court was told. Summers said that, in July last year, lawyers in “the Beatles” case in the state of Virginia clarified they were not seeking to prosecute Davis “because the evidence was there were only three members and not four members of that cell”. The barrister claimed Patel veered into “Alice in Wonderland territory” when she phoned authorities in the US begging them to take Davis’s case. Summers said: “The irregular personal involvement of the home secretary trying to persuade a foreign country to prosecute a UK national is, frankly, extraordinary.” The prosecution disputed the defence claims, which were rejected by the judge Mark Lucraft – and, later, by the court of appeal.