(RightWing.org) – Syrian-born Islamist militant Omar Bakri Muhammad founded the al-Muhajiroun (ALM) group in the United Kingdom in 1996 to force his radical vision of Islam through violent means. A radical British preacher named Anjem Choudary took over the group after Lebanese officials imprisoned Muhammad in 2014. A jury recently convicted Choudary over his terrorist ties.
On July 23, British media outlets reported that prosecutors obtained a guilty verdict in Woolwich Crown Court at the conclusion of a six-week trial. The jury convicted Choudary for his “caretaker role” in directing ALM and fostering cross-border support for the banned organization.
Prosecutors accused Choudary of leading the terrorist group for the past decade. They also said he encouraged international support for the ALM by addressing online meetings of the organization’s New York-based branch, the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS). The ITS was one of many terrorist chapters the ALM created using various aliases.
Trained as an attorney, Choudary managed to evade arrest for a couple of years. However, he spent half of a six-month sentence behind bars in a British prison in 2016 following his conviction for supporting ISIS. Authorities released him under the terms of a conditional parole that expired in July 2021.
Less than a year later, Choudary started hosting online lectures for ITS aided by a 29-year-old Canadian gas station attendant named Khaled Hussein, aka Abu Aisha al Kanadi. However, investigators from the New York Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had infiltrated that group and attended those lectures.
NYPD and RCMP officials eventually shared their evidence with British authorities, leading to Choudary’s arrest in April 2023. British law enforcement officials arrested Hussein upon his arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport in July 2023. Prosecutors tried him alongside Choudary for being a member of the ALM/ITS and obtained a guilty verdict.
The Court scheduled Choudary and Hussein’s sentencing hearing for July 30. It remains unclear how much prison time each man faces, but British media outlets report they face “significant” sentences.
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