WEB OF HATRED
From 7/7 bombers to Lee Rigby’s killers, how vile preacher inspired generation of jihadis
Anjem Choudary was at the heart of an international web of extremism.
His network of radical connections read like a Who’s Who of modern Islamic terrorism.
Choudary’s associates have been connected to at least 15 major terrorist plots and experts believe 500 jihadist disciples are fighting for Islamic State in Syria.
The former law student’s links led from street-level jihadi recruitment cells to the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. Al-muhajiroun, the Al Qaeda-inspired group he helped set up in the UK in the 1990s, also radicalised the july 7 bombers and reached into Paris and Syria.
many radicals tried for serious terror offences were influenced by his lectures and speeches.
Until now, Choudary – who had called for muslims to attack the UK and adulterers to be stoned to death and branded UK troops cowthe ards – has always hidden behind free speech rules whenever challenged by the authorities.
But while he ran rings around the police, security services and the government, he brainwashed hundreds of young men who subscribed to his warped vision of Islam.
His best-known acolytes were muslim converts michael Adebolajo and michael Adebowale, who attacked Fusilier Rigby with a meat cleaver outside a barracks in Woolwich, south-east London. The murder of the soldier at the age of 25 after surviving the dusty killing fields of Afghanistan, shocked the nation.
The pair supported Al-muhajiroun, and Adebolajo was pictured standing behind the extremist preacher in 2007. After the murder, Choudary disgusted the country by saying Adebolajo was ‘a practising muslim’ he was ‘proud of’.
Another high profile disciple was Siddhartha Dhar – branded the ‘new jihadi john’ after being named prime suspect in a gruesome IS execution video last january.
Dhar had been arrested with Choudary and mizanur Rahman in September 2014. But Scotland Yard was humiliated when the extremist – now known as Abu Rumaysah – skipped bail and slipped out of Britain.
He took his pregnant wife and four young children to Syria where he posed for pictures with a newborn in one hand and an assault rifle in the other.
Choudary’s former bodyguard, mohammed Reza Haque, is also suspected of executing prisoners in an IS video released in january.
And another associate, Abdul Waheed majeed, 41, became the first British suicide bomber in Syria, driving an armoured dumper truck laden with explosives into the gates of Aleppo prison in january 2014.
Choudary became heir apparent of Al-muhajiroun in 2005 when his spiritual guide Omar Bakri mohammed fled Britain in the wake of the july 7 terror attacks.
He organised a string of stunts to offend to the British public and gain media attention, including a group burning a giant poppy and screamed insults during a twominute silence in London on Armistice Day in november 2010.
But alongside the attempts to inflame public outrage, followers of Al-muhajiroun were caught plotting much more sinister acts before the group was finally banned in 2010.
In may this year, delivery driver junead Ahmed Khan was jailed for life for a plot to murder US troops posted to British military bases in july 2015.
Khan, whose older brother was one of the key members of Anjem Choudary’s circle, wanted to cause a car crash and coax soldiers from their vehicles before hacking them to death with a hunting knife.
Brustholm Ziamani was radicalised in just a few weeks by Almuhajiroun before he was arrested on his way to behead a British soldier in a copycat Lee Rigby-style terror attack. He was jailed for 19
‘Screamed insults on Armistice Day’
years after being stopped by chance in east London armed with a hammer and a 12inch knife as he searched for a soldier to attack on August 19, 2014.
mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the group behind the 7/7 London bombings, which killed 52 people, was linked to Al-muhajiroun. The other bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain were also members of the group. Khan used Al-muhajiroun safe houses before the bombing.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, ringleader of the Paris atrocities last novembe, and Omar Ismael mostelfai, one of the suicide bombers at the Bataclan nightclub, are said to have been involved in the group.
In another case, four Al-muhajiroun supporters from London and Cardiff, began planning a Christmas car bomb attack on the London Stock exchange in 2010. And a boy of 14 who idolised Choudary was jailed for life after orchestrating a plot to kill police in melbourne, Australia, from his bedroom in Lancashire.
The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, used Twitter to get in touch with Sevedet Besim, 18, an Australian planning a suicide attack during a Remembrance Day parade.