Anjem Choudary may be an unfamiliar name abroad, but he has become well known in Britain for his contempt for the country and its people. Aged 49, he was actually born and brought up in England. At university, he called himself Andy and a photograph shows him partying and drinking. He was already a qualified solicitor when he met Omar Bakri Muhammad, a fanatic preacher of violence who eventually fled to Lebanon. Openly, Choudary undertook the promotion of Islamist terror. Whenever there was an atrocity, the media, the BBC leading the field, used to invite him to comment, in effect giving him opportunity to justify the murder of non-Muslims. Secretly he was recruiting jihadis. Craftily using his knowledge of law, mostly claiming his right to free speech, he escaped prosecution. There could be no clearer example of someone exploiting democracy in order to destroy it.
I once happened to be crossing a London square, and there he was, microphone in hand, ranting to a group of like-minded Muslims about the wickedness of non-Muslims and the perfection of sharia law that he would impose. Anyone who spoke about Muslims in that manner would have been arrested at once. Here a large number of policemen were busy speeding passers-by like me on their way.
Counter-terrorist police found that Choudary had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, the so-called caliphate. At last he could be arrested. On the eve of his trial, he had one last sortie on Sky Television, assuring the interviewer that he would be acquitted. At his trial at the Old Bailey, it came out that he was linked to 15 major terrorist plots. I read in one report that his defense lawyer likened him to the poet William Wordsworth who praised the aims of the French revolution but not its means. Unconvinced by this wonderful literary flourish, the jury unanimously found him guilty, and it looks as if he will go to prison for ten years.
Anjem Choudary Convicted -- ISIS Support Led to Arrest