AN A-level student who created a 'hub of communication' to help like-minded extremists including Bolton teacher Jamshed Javeed go to Syria to fight jihad is facing jail.

Abdullahi Ahmed Jama Farah, aged 20, was found guilty of preparing for terrorist acts by helping Nur Hassan, aged 19, from Manchester, achieve his aim of travelling to Syria to fight, following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Close friends Raphael Hostey, Mohammed Javeed and Khalil Raoufi also headed from North West England to Syria on October 6, 2013, to join IS, the court heard.

Javeed's brother, former Sharples School teacher Jamshed Javeed, also planned to join IS, but was arrested in Britain before he could get there.

When Jama Farah was arrested on March 11, 2014, he told police that he knew them all through his cousin Halane, who was 'emir', or leader, of their group of close friends.

A snapshot of life under Islamic State was revealed in photographs Raoufi sent to the defendant via WhatsApp and Twitter in and around Al-Ittihad university near the Syrian city of Raqqah, which had been turned into a training camp with a stash of weaponry.

Jama Farah is related to the so-called "terror twins", Zhara and Salma Halane, who at the age of 16 left their home in Chorlton in Manchester in June 2014 and are believed to have married IS fighters.

Prosecutor Gareth Patterson had told jurors it was clear that Jama Farah supported IS from what was found on his computers as well as messages on WhatsApp and social media.

Mr Patterson said he performed an "important role as the hub of communication" in the UK.

Jama Farah, of South Grove, Fallowfield, Manchester, denied wrongdoing. He was cast by his defence as an over-excited teenager sitting in his bedroom at home on his computer in contact with his friends and passing on phone numbers, concerned for their welfare.

However, the jury convicted him of facilitating Hassan's travel to Syria and for his communication with Raoufi.