An aid convoy that included murdered ISIS hostage Alan Henning was used to smuggle cash to extremists in Syria, a court heard today.
One humanitarian mission - used by Syed Hoque to send thousands of pounds to his Al-Qaeda fighter nephew - included the butchered taxi driver from Eccles, Greater Manchester.
British probation officer Hoque, 37, has been jailed after he sent £4,500 in 2013 to his relative, who was fighting with Islamic extremists against the Syrian regime.
Mr Henning was later kidnapped and beheaded by ' Jihadi John ' Mohammed Emwazi in a sick execution that was filmed and posted on the internet.
In one transaction Hoque, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, sent £3,000 through an aid convoy, and in another he sent £1,500 with the help of Mashoud Miah, 28, who was working as an aid worker travelling to and from Syria.
Dad-of-four Hoque had also discussed with his nephew, Mohammed Choudhury, the possibility of buying weapons - including a Dragunov sniper rifle, which has a firing range of over a mile.
His nephew ended up buying an AK-47 assault rifle, London's Old Bailey was told today.
The pair were convicted in December of terror funding, and today Hoque was jailed for five-and-a-half years and Miah for two-and-a-half years.
Their defence teams claimed they had acted with a moral purpose over the situation in Syria - but this was rejected outright by he judge.
Sentencing them, Judge John Bevan, QC said: "Terrorism is terrorism, whatever the motives of the perpetrators.
"I emphasise that there is no such thing as noble cause terrorism ."
He said a "serious feature" of the case was that Hoque had been a probation officer in London until 2013.
The judge added: "The honourable principles of criminal law and humanitarian behaviour into which you were inducted as a probation officer have clearly been cast aside in favour of supporting illegal activity in a foreign country whose affairs, as I understand it, were nothing to do with you, save ideology.
"This case is not about the undoubted evils of the current regime in Syria; it is about the exporting of terrorism and money and materials to wage official war against a foreign country.
"The prosecution were quite right, in my judgment, that you regarded yourself, Hoque, as the 'only sheriff in town'."
Judge Bevan added: "Both of you sought to abuse the legitimate aid convoys which depend on integrity if they are to function properly."
The funding arrangement was discovered after Hoque and his wife were stopped at Heathrow Airport in August 2014 as they returned from Bangladesh, and their phones were seized.
Although no extremist material was found on them, later analysis revealed Hoque had been communicating on WhatsApp with a man known as Sayyaf, who was using a Turkish number.
This turned out to be Hoque's nephew, who left the UK aged 22 and was fighting for Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist group representing the wing of Al-Qaeda in Syria.
Hoque was convicted unanimously of two counts of funding terrorism, and cleared of one count of the same
He was also handed a four-year sentence to run concurrently with his five-and-a-half years jail term.
Miah, of Mile End, east London, was convicted of one count of funding terrorism, involving the £1,500 transaction. He was cleared of three counts of the same.
Two other men, Mohammed Ibrahim Hussain, 30, of Mile End, and Pervez Rafiq, 46, of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, were cleared of involvement with the plot.