Anjem Choudary, leader of the banned terror group al-Muhajiroun, has been sentenced to life imprisonment and may never be released. He was convicted of directing
the group and encouraging support through online meetings.
Choudary cannot seek parole until he is over 85 years old. At Woolwich Crown Court, he appeared shocked as he received a minimum term of 28 years.
The extremist preacher was found guilty last week of directing a terror organization after a complex investigation involving detectives from the US, Canada, and the UK. Mr. Justice Wall stated that Choudary’s group aimed to spread sharia law worldwide through violent means.
Choudary, a notorious radicalizer in the UK, was exposed by an international undercover investigation that revealed the long-banned al-Muhajiroun network he headed was still active in 2021, recruiting followers under a false name in North America.
Al-Muhajiroun, which emerged in the late 1990s, has been linked to numerous acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally. Choudary has been central to the organization since its inception and became its leader in 2014 after its founder was imprisoned in Lebanon.
Choudary’s current imprisonment relates to his efforts to rebuild the network in 2021, following his release from a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for promoting support for Islamic State fighters in Syria. After his release, Choudary began holding online lectures with followers in North America, unaware that undercover officers from Canadian and US security services had infiltrated his sessions.
Mr. Justice Wall stated that in approximately 30 lectures, Choudary encouraged members of the “Islamic Thinkers Society,” a codename for the al-Muhajiroun network, to engage in confrontational street preaching and acts of violence. The judge noted that Choudary thinly disguised these exhortations as lessons in Islamic theology, knowing they would lead to violence.
“Organizations such as yours normalize violence in pursuit of an ideological cause,” the judge said. “They drive wedges between people who would otherwise live together in peaceful co-existence. Your behavior was of the highest culpability."
The judge also mentioned that Choudary’s followers included Siddhartha Dhar, who joined the Islamic State group in Syria and committed murders. In 2023, two Birmingham brothers were jailed for planning to join the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan branch, with one describing Choudary as an inspiration.
“I am sure you will continue to preach your message of hate and division in the future; you are not someone who can be diverted from that course,” the judge said. “The dangers you pose are in your organizational skills and skills as an orator. I cannot foresee a time when you will cease to be dangerous.”
Choudary’s co-accused, Canadian Khaled Hussein, was convicted of being a member of al-Muhajiroun and sentenced to five years in prison, with an additional year on a supervision license after release.
Earlier in the hearing, Paul Hynes KC, representing Choudary, argued that al-Muhajiroun was not comparable to al-Qaeda or Islamic State. He described Choudary’s lectures as dense theological discussions, not mass mobilizations, and suggested the organization was a failure. Photo by Wikimedia commons.