Wife of hate preacher Choudary is spared probe for backing IS
With five of fanatic’s acolytes set to walk free...
THE ISLAMIC STATE RECRUITER AND FIVE BOMB PLOTTERS
POLICe have dropped a terror investigation into the wife of jailed hate preacher anjem Choudary ahead of his release from jail.
rubana akhtar, 43, faced an inquiry by Scotland Yard’s counter- terrorism command after being filmed leading a secret group of British women supporting Islamic State.
The mother of five, who has spent years living on benefits, previously admitted to being the leader of the female wing of Choudary’s banned terror group al-Muhajiroun.
akhtar was filmed promoting IS by an undercover reporter and abusing ‘filthy Jews’ while her husband was being investigated by police in 2015.
But after an 18-month inquiry, police say she has not committed any terror offences.
The news comes as Government figures reveal that one terrorist is being released from jail nearly every week.
The home Office says 46 prisoners held for terror offences were let out between March 2017 and 2018. Of those, 17 had sentences of four years or more while one was released after being given an indeterminate sentence for public protection.
The number of terror suspects in prison hit a record 218 last year.
The failure of the case against akhtar follows news that her husband, a notorious hate preacher who inspired a generation of terrorists, is being prepared for release from prison next month. Choudary, 51, will be freed after serving half a 66-month sentence for drumming up support for Islamic State in 2016.
For 20 years he espoused poisonous views with impunity, delivering sermons inspiring beheadings and bomb plots worldwide. he is thought to have helped 110 British jihadists travel to Syria to fight for Islamic State. Five of his fol-
‘Extremely dangerous’
lowers will also be freed after being convicted of atrocities including plots to blow up the London Stock exchange and royal Wootton Bassett, the Wiltshire town where the bodies of soldiers killed in afghanistan were honoured after being flown home.
his wife’s role running a secretive Islamic sisterhood remained under wraps until the group was infiltrated by an undercover reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches who spent a year covertly filming their clandestine meetings.
akhtar, who admitted running the female wing of al- Muhajiroun before it was banned in 2010, was secretly filmed in 2015 praising IS as an Islamic caliphate at the study group to recruit Muslim women with children.
referring to IS as the Khilafah, Choudary’s wife, who now calls herself Umm Luqman, said: ‘ The good days have already begun, nobody ever have thought in our lifetime we would see the establishment of the Khilafah.’
She claimed in front of children that what the Government calls extremism was simply being a good Muslim, adding that the statement ‘There is no god but allah... makes you Muslim’ and ‘is a rejection of democracy and the rule of law’.
nazir afzal, the former chief prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in the north West, said akhtar’s support for IS was ‘extremely dangerous’.
Following the broadcast of the programme in november 2015, police began an investigation. But after almost two years, officers have dropped the probe. a police spokesman said yesterday: ‘Inquiries found no evidence of terrorism or other offences having been committed.’