JUNADE FEROZE was a high school dropout without any qualifications, the court heard.

The father-of-three had an intellect below that of an average 12-year-old and left school before completing his GCSEs, the judge was told.

Feroze, a Blackburn car dealer, was a former pupil at Pleckgate High School.

Born and brought up in Blackburn, as the middle child of four sisters and two brothers, Feroze had an arranged marriage to a cousin, Mizrab, in Pakistan, at age 20. They lived in Malham Gardens in the town.

They had a happy marriage and had three children, now aged nine, eight and four.

At 24, Feroze became the English Welterweight Thai Boxing Champion but when his father, an active member of the local Labour Party, died of cancer in 2000 he took on a central role in the family garage business.

"This gave him the means to dispose of cars and to obtain both tyres and gas canisters which figure in the plans for attacks both in this country and America," said Johnathan Laidlaw, prosecuting.

Feroze worked buying and selling cars at a garage on Copperfield Street.

Mr Laidlaw said his attendance at talks by radical Islamic clerics and his possession of extreme material demonstrated that he shared Dhiren Barot's "ideology" and believed that acts of terrorism were justified in the achieving of their objectives.

His father, an immigrant from the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, was a central figure in the Kashmiri community in Blackburn and was for many years president of the Kashmiri Association.

And it was said to be through links to the Kashmir community that Feroze, known to friends as "Butch", became involved in terror plots. He was said to have came into contact with Barot through the struggle for independence in Kashmir.

Barot told him he had funding to help the struggle and was welcomed into the Feroze family. But Feroze's counsel told the court that he was a "moderate man" who never knew what Barot was planning.

However the court had earlier been told that Feroze had attended a talk by Abu Hamza in 1999 in Blackburn and between then and 2001 he went to Pakistan for "religious education and training."

At the time of his arrest, Feroze's brother Javaid spoke out in the Lancashire Telegraph and said that he was innocent. And family spokesperson Jawaid Iqbal said at the time: "Everyone who knows him, knows him as a hard-working lad. He is not involved in any terrorist activities of any kind.

"These arrests portray a very negative image of Muslims living here and spreads panic between communities."

But today as Feroze begins a 22-year sentence, his family, friends and the wider community in Blackburn have now to come to terms with the fact that he was a member of a terrorist cell plotting mass murder.