A radical Islamist cleric who led a banned terror group and sought support for the group online has been convicted after a transatlantic investigation.
Anjem Choudary, 57, from Ilford, east London, has been found guilty of directing a banned Islamist terror group al-Muhajiroun (ALM) and encouraging support for the group online.
The preacher was accused of running ALM, an organisation first banned under UK anti-terror laws in 2006 and proscribed under its current name in 2010. Choudary was charged with encouraging support for the group – a charge which he denied.
Arrested a year ago, Choudary was found guilty on Tuesday after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court of directing the terrorist group and addressing meetings to encourage support for the proscribed organisation.
A second man, Khaled Hussein, 29, from Edmonton, Canada, was found guilty of belonging to a proscribed organisation.
The convictions followed investigations by the Metropolitan Police, the New York Police Department, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
One of the UK’s most high-profile Islamist preachers and a longtime thorn in the side of British authorities, Choudary was jailed in 2016 for encouraging support for the Islamic State group. He was released in 2018 after serving half of his five-and-a-half-year sentence.
In 2021, detectives from the Met’s Counter-Terrorism Command (CTC) were alerted by the NYPD that Choudary was becoming involved in a group called the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS).
Evidence gathered by New York police showed that Choudary was hosting and running lectures for ITS via encrypted online platforms. Police described ITS as a continuation and extension of ALM.
Sifting through hundreds of hours of audio and visual material as well as 16,000 documents, detectives were able to prove the links between ALM, ITS and Choudary.
Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's counter-terrorism command, said: "The information and evidence we were able to gather, all while working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service, meant we were able to build a very strong case to prove Choudary was directing the ALM terrorist group and encouraging others to join them.”
Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner from the New York Police Department (NYPD), said Choudary was a ““Anjem Choudary spent decades radicalising individuals around the world and has now been brought to justice thanks to relentless collaboration across multiple agencies and countries.”
