European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
Hate preacher Anjem Choudary is arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences in dawn police raid at his home
dailymail – Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has been arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences in a police raid at dawn at his home.Officers searched the home of Choudary, 56, in east London at around 5.40am yesterday, according to The Telegraph.They also arrested a 28-year-old Canadian national at Heathrow Airport at approximately 12.35pm, after he arrived on a flight from Canada. Both were arrested on suspicion of membership of a proscribed organisation, contrary to section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000.The men are currently being held at a west London police station.Trained lawyer Choudary was seen as the UK’s most prominent Islamic extremist for some time, heading up multiple militant groups.
Those groups included Al-Muhajiroun – which were banned from the UK in 2005 after the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. The preacher had described those who carried out 9/11 as ‘magnificent martyrs’.In January, Choudary condemned Prince Harry’s admission in his book Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban fighters while he was serving in Afghanistan. Father-of-five Choudary was a founding member of the banned group al-Muhajiroun and had claimed he would be happy to see the black flag of ISIS hanging over 10 Downing Street.Supporters of Choudary included radicalised Michael Adebolajo and Michael Abedowale – who were convicted of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
Choudary was also connected with suspected ISIS executioner Siddharta Dhar. In January, the US State Department designated Dhar as a terrorist. He is believed to have left the UK in late 2014 and emerged in Syria.Born in London in 1967, Anjem Choudary grew up in the capital and went to school in Woolwich. He initially studied medicine at the University of Southampton but ended up failing his first-year exams.He switched to law instead and became known on the course as Andy, a ‘party animal’ who drank alcohol, smoked cannabis and read adult magazines.Failure to land a job at a law firm was reportedly the starting point of Choudary’s extremism. He connected with Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Muhammad and together they founded ALM.The network was proscribed in 2010 and counted the Lee Rigby murderers and London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt among its followers.
Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was also linked to Choudary through Ibrahim Anderson, an al-Muhajiroun activist convicted of inviting support for ISIS in 2016.His wife, Rubana Akhtar, whom Choudary married in 1996, is thought to be just as extreme as her husband, having been filmed in 2016 talking favourably about ISIS.
