'Terrorists' favourite bookseller' whose literature was found in the home of 7/7 bombings leader has conviction quashed

• Ahmed Faraz was convicted of 11 counts of possessing and disseminating terrorist publications in 2011
• High-profile terrorists including Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the 7/7 bomb plot, were among the bookseller's customers
• Court of Appeal judges have now upheld the 33-year-old's appeal against his conviction

Appeal: Ahmed Faraz's appeal against his conviction for publishing and distributing extremist texts to terrorists was upheld

A bookseller who was jailed for publishing and distributing extremist texts to terrorists has had his conviction quashed.

Birmingham-raised Ahmed Faraz, 33 - who counted high-profile terrorists including July 7 bomb plot leader Mohammed Sidique Khan among his customers - was convicted of 11 counts of possessing and disseminating terrorist publications in 2011.

Court of Appeal judges have now ruled the prosecution should not have been allowed to rely on the presence of the books in terrorists' homes, when there was no suggestion the texts had actually encouraged them to carry out acts of extremism.

Father-of-five Faraz, who operated out of the Maktabah Islamic bookshop in Birmingham, had been sentenced to three years in prison for publishing radical texts and violent DVDs and distributing them globally in an effort to 'prime people for terrorism'.

At the time of Faraz's conviction in 2011 Mr Justice Calvert Smith said many Maktabah publications had found their way onto the bookshelves of terrorists.

Members of the gang behind the foiled trans-Atlantic airline plot cited Faraz's texts in their suicide videos, a report in the Daily Telegraph said.

• Having worked for car manufacturer Rover, the stock broker Charles Schwab and British Gas, Faraz had became involved with Maktabah as a 23-year-old, editing texts and producing DVDs.

Bookseller: Ahmed Faraz worked out of the Maktabah bookshop in Birmingham, which was raided by police ahead of his original trial

Customer: July 7 bomb plot leader Mohammed Sidique Khan on the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera in 2005

While working at the shop in Sparkhill he wrote a foreward to Milestones, by Sayyid Qutb, whose works are known to have influenced al-Qaeda.

Faraz, who has a degree in Islamic theology from the University of Birmingham, also circulated books written by Abdullah Azzam, a highly influential scholar who preached jihad and mentored Osama bin Laden.

In the past the 33-year-old has spoken in defence of Maktabah, which he insisted was not an extremist bookshop, but a shop which aimed to present Islam 'as a whole'.

His appeal was upheld last month, but was not previously reported.

The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed yesterday that it would not seek a retrial, according to a report in the Times.

Religious texts: The interior of the Maktabah bookshop in Birmingham, left, and right, some of the books and DVDs that are thought to have been available at the store