UK charges fiery Muslim preacher with ‘terror’ offences

A fiery British Muslim preacher, Anjem Choudary, has been charged with three terror offences including membership of a proscribed organisation, directing an organisation and addressing meetings to encourage support for a proscribed organisation, the police said on Monday.

The London-based preacher was arrested last week alongside Canadian Islamic cleric, Khaled Hussein, who has also been charged with membership of a proscribed organisation.

The UK police said the two were arrested on arrival at the Heathrow Airport and taken into custody and were arraigned on Monday.

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Choudary, 56, who is one of Britain’s most high-profile Muslim preachers, was imprisoned in 2016 for encouraging support for the ISIS armed group before being released in 2018 after serving half of his five-years-and-a-half sentence, the police statement said.

“ISIL has been proscribed as a terrorist group in Britain since June 2014, making inviting support for the group a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison,” the statement said.

“Choudary, former head of the now-banned organisation al-Muhajiroun, drew attention for praising the men responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States and saying he wanted to convert Buckingham Palace into a mosque,” a report in a British media said.

“British police previously said that the group was suspected of being the driving force behind the 2005 London bombings, while Michael Adebolajo, one of the men who hacked to death British soldier Lee Rigby on a London street in 2013, had attended protests Choudary had organised,” the report added.

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