Once Britain’s most high-profile Islamist preacher, Anjem Choudary, has been found guilty of directing a banned terror outfit and encouraging support for it online. On Tuesday (23rd July), London’s Woolwich Crown Court convicted him on charges of taking a “caretaker role” in Al-Muhajiroun (ALM), a proscribed terror group.
Prosecutors stated that Choudary had been directing the terror group since 2014 and encouraged support for it by addressing online meetings. The prosecution stated that he was still acting as its leader as late as July 2023 and made online speeches to a US-based offshoot called Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS), which prosecutors said was “the same” as ALM. However, the ITS group was infiltrated by US undercover law enforcement officers who were present at his online lectures in 2022 and 2023. They recorded his speeches which were played during trials.
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Anjem Choudary, the notorious Islamist preacher, is facing life in jail after he was found guilty of directing a terrorist organisation following an unprecedented joint investigation by MI5, Scotland Yard, the New York Police Department and Canadian…
On Tuesday, the London Court also found one of his supporters, Khaled Hussein (29) guilty of ALM membership. The court will now announce sentencing on 30th July.
Notably, ALM was first banned by the UK’s Home Secretary in 2006 under the name Al Ghurabaa. ALM which was using a different name was again banned in 2010. According to prosecutors, ALM regularly changed its name.
A British-Pakistani, Anjem Choudary (57) a resident of Ilford, East London, was arrested along with Hussein, a resident of Edmonton, Canada. They were detained when Hussein arrived at Heathrow Airport on 17th July, last year.
During the trial, Choudary said that he was one of the original three members of ALM, which was founded in 1996. In a covert audio recording that was played during the trial, Choudary was heard saying that the group operated under more than 50 aliases during its existence.
According to security experts, Choudary influenced dozens of British jihadists. His followers have been linked to numerous plots across the world. Radicals who had links with ALM carried out several attacks that police said were “terror-related”.
In 2017, three attackers killed eight people at London Bridge and they were led by a former ALM member. Earlier that year, five people were killed at Westminster Bridge by a man who had spent years associating with this terror group.
In 2019, another member associated with this outfit killed two people at Fishmongers Hall.
Anjem Choudary was sentenced to five years for encouraging support for the Islamic State
In 2016, Anjem Choudary was sentenced to five years in prison for encouraging support for the Islamic State group. However, he was released early on license after he served half of his sentence. His licence conditions expired in July 2021 and afterwards, he started peddling press releases on WhatsApp and Telegram from his residence in East London. According to the reports, he was grooming recruits as young as 14 years of age.
During the trials, he told the court that after his release he had continued to do his best to “propagate Islam”.
According to a report in The Times, Choudary delivered more than 40 lectures in a year. In some of these lectures, the followers were limited in numbers but others saw an audience of up to 150 from as far away as Brazil and Afghanistan.
However, the group had been infiltrated by two US undercover law enforcement officers who recorded his speeches.
In one of these speeches, Choudary boasted that he had been labelled “the number one radicaliser in Britain”. He added, “That is a badge of honour for me. It’s a medallion on my chest. What do you want to call me? An extremist? Fanatic? All of these.”
Khalid Hussein, a member of the ITS, began an online magazine called al-Aseer [the prisoners]. He told Canadian undercover officers that he was “working with Sheikh Anjem” and that “they were the remnants of al-Muhajiroun (AML)”.
Head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, Commander Dominic Murphy said, “ALM’s tentacles have spread across the world and have had a massive impact on public safety and security.”
During a press conference, Murphy added, “There are individuals that have conducted terrorist attacks or travelled for terrorist purposes as a result of Anjem Choudary’s radicalising impact upon them.”
Commander Murphy further stated that the charge used to prosecute Choudary was “very rare” in the UK and described his conviction as a “significant milestone“. He added that the Met Police’s counter-terrorism command was “seeing an increasingly larger number of young people in our case files”.
An NYPD deputy commissioner, Rebecca Weiner said that it was a “historic case”. She described Choudary as a “shameless, prolific radicaliser”.
She added, “It is usually the foot soldiers, the individuals who are brought into the network who go on to commit the attacks who are brought to justice. And it’s rarely the leader, which is what makes this a particularly important moment.”
