[imagesource: Hawks]

Yesterday, Tony-Lee and Brandon-Lee Thulsie, known as the ‘terror twins’, pleaded guilty to trying to join the Islamic State in Syria and of conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks in the name of the Islamic State (IS) in South Africa.

Brandon-Lee received eight years and brother Tony-Lee received 11 years in the Johannesburg High Court, having spent the past six years in jail following their arrest in July 2016.

The judge said that the time they have already spent in custody will be deducted from the time they serve so it could be a pretty short stay, especially for Brandon-Lee.

Zapiro might have a thing or two to say about that, given that the duo had plans to assassinate him. Below via The Daily Maverick:

Confined to South Africa, they then plotted to carry out terrorist attacks against the enemies of Isil in South Africa, including Western embassies and diplomats, Jewish interests and mosques of the Shia Islam sect.

Image: Neil McCartney

And they planned an attack on Zapiro because, years before, he had drawn a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch, bemoaning his adherents’ lack of humour – a reference to the uproar in the faith about other satires on Muhammad.

In 2015, the offices of French satirical outlet Charlie Hebdo were attacked by gunmen who killed 12 people, so there was a precedent for this sort of attack.

Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) recalled how the Hawks contacted him in 2016 to say that they had intercepted communication between the twins and “an operative outside South Africa”.

That communication discussed using “small arms, explosives or poison to assassinate him”.

Zapiro said the Charlie Hebdo attacks made the threat all the more real:

…”for this to be happening in South Africa, right around the corner, for it to be a real possibility that I could be assassinated, was enormously chilling. I felt it was a threat to freedom of expression, a threat to individual journalists.

“It was a threat to satire in general, because I’m not a reporter, I’m a visual commentator. So this was not about anything which I reported. This was about the simple act of being able to comment on and to satirise events that happen in society.

“I was very, very worried. I had to submit an affidavit. It’s part of the court record. I thought I was going to be called as a witness.”

He was never called as a witness with the twins taking a plea deal which saw the original lengthy charge sheet reduced to three.

Tony-Lee received a longer sentence because he also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack in South Africa and requesting instructions on how to make an explosive device.

[source:dailymaverick]