Two men accused of handing out leaflets on a London street in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group have pleaded not guilty, UK paper The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday. The two men, Shah Jahah Khan, 62, and Muslim convert Ibrahim Anderson, 38, both denied a charge of soliciting support for ISIS, blacklisted by UK authorities as a terrorist organization. In August last year, the two men are alleged to have handed out the material on London's busy Oxford Street, hailing the establishment of the "khilafah" - a reference to ISIS's declaration of an "caliphate" under the leadership of its self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. While the leaflets avoided directly mentioning ISIS, "an expert in Islamic studies has concluded the only circumstances the leaflets could possibly be making reference to are the declaration by ISIS and its leader of the establishment of an Islamic State last summer," Prosecutor Adam Harbinson told the court, according to the Daily Mail. Harbinson added that in a response to a question from a member of the public, one of the accused men had replied that non-believers "should be killed." Both men, who wore traditional clothing commonly associated with Muslims, chose to stand throughout the hearing. The two have been granted conditional bail, and are due to appear in court again next month. Last year, Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), told Al Arabiya News that the distribution of the leaflets was "extremely distasteful and upsetting."
