Woolwich attack: Calls for Anjem Choudary to be placed under a new terror control order

Calls were growing last night for Anjem Choudary, the radical Islamist accused of brainwashing one of the Woolwich murder suspects, to be placed under a new terror control order.

It is estimated that one in five terrorists convicted in Britain over the past decade were either members of or linked to al-Muhajiroun, the extremist group founded by Choudary and the exiled preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Choudary, 46, and a lawyer by training, has never been convicted of any offence, much to the frustration of British authorities.

But the revelation last week that al-Muhajiroun had played a large part in radicalising Michael Adebolajo, 28, who is accused of murdering a soldier outside Woolwich Barracks, has renewed pressure on the Home Office to find a way of dealing with Choudary.

Omar Bakri, a Syrian-born cleric, left Britain in the wake of comments made after the July 7 attack on London in 2005 and has been refused permission to come back. He now lives in exile in Lebanon.

But Choudary was born in Britain and went, ironically, to Mulgrave Primary School. It is beside the road where Lee Rigby, the soldier, was murdered.

His British citizenship makes it impossible for authorities to deport him. The recently introduced Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measure (TPim) regime, which was brought in to replace the old control orders, may now be used to try to curb his radical preachings.

Mark Reckless, a Conservative member of the home affairs select committee, said: “If there is clear evidence of him [Choudary] encouraging terrorism or inciting violence then the Home Secretary may want to consider if he’s a fit person to be subject to the TPim regime.”

The TPim regime is less restrictive than the control orders it replaced and which fell foul of human rights legislation.

Last week, Choudary refused to condemn the killings while Omar Bakri, speaking from Lebanon, praised the killers’ “courage” in standing and waiting for police to arrive at the scene rather than fleeing.

Choudary was radicalised in the 1990s. He was a medical student at Southampton University – known to friends as Andy – but failed his first year due to excessive partying.

It has been claimed that in those days, he drank, womanised and took drugs. He switched to law but became embittered when a City law firm turned him down for a well-paid job.

He began attending mosque and his path crossed with Omar Bakri and another radical preacher Abu Hamza, who ran Finsbury Park mosque.

Since those days he has been inseparable from Omar Bakri. He drafted Omar Bakri’s resignation letter from Hizb ut-Tahrir, another radical Islamist organisation, and they established al-Muhajiroun.

The group was based at first in the basement of Finsbury Park mosque before moving to offices on a retail park in Tottenham, London. Omar Bakri became known as the “Tottenham Ayatollah” but not taken seriously until the 9/11 attacks.

The group espouses a hardline version of Islam, whose ambition is to see sharia law imposed in the UK.

Al-Muhajiroun was finally banned in 2010. Choudary had in the meantime set up other groups such as the Saved Sect and run a website Islam4UK, which has also been shut down. But efforts to strangulate al-Muhajiroun and its offshoots are difficult in an internet age.

On Friday, Omar Bakri was preaching to his followers in an internet chatroom. He even briefly discussed the case of the murdered soldier. The chatroom can be followed by anybody signing up to it.

Affiliates of al-Muhajiroun have gone on to be implicated in terrorism. One of Choudary’s proteges Richard Dart, 30, a white British convert, was jailed for six years last month for plotting to attack soldiers in Royal Wootton Bassett.

Another former al-Muhajiroun associate Omar Khyam was jailed for life in 2007 for leading the “fertiliser bomb” plot targeting London nightclubs. In March 2007, Abdul Muhid, a al-Muhajiroun stalwart, was convicted of soliciting murder during Danish embassy anti-cartoon protests. In April 2008, he was convicted of fundraising for terrorism.

Last week, Lord Carlile, the Government’s former reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, called for an investigation into Choudary over his connections to Michael Adebolajo. Yesterday, Choudary said he had not been approached by police investigating the Woolwich murder.

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