The first Muslim cleric to face trial in a British criminal court has been convicted of soliciting the murder of “non-believers,” including Jews, Hindus and Americans. A jury at London’s Old Bailey court also found Abdullah el Faisal guilty of racial hatred in a series of sermons against non-Muslims that he preached on videotapes and in personal appearances around the country. El Faisal faces sentencing March 7 and faces a maximum term of life imprisonment on the soliciting to murder charge. Government authorities also said he is likely to be deported to his native Jamaica — where he was born 39 years ago as William Forest — after his sentence. The case marked the first time in more than a century that anyone had been charged under Britain’s 1861 Offenses Against the Person Act of soliciting murder without a specific victim. The bearded cleric pleaded not guilty to a total of nine charges, claiming his words had been “misrepresented.” But Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch, said Britain’s Muslim community was “appalled by his lectures, which were deliberately targeted at impressionable young people.” Full Story