British Extremist Preacher sends hundreds of Britons to join al-Qaeda inSyria

The 46-year-old British preacher Anjem Choudary has ‘facilitated or encouraged’ up to 80 British young people and 250 to 300 people from across Europe to join forces fighting the Syrian state, a report published by the British Independent newspaper said on Monday.

 The report said that a network of groups led by the extremist Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary has become the “single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history”, according to a major investigation.

“Groups linked to Choudary have “facilitated or encouraged” up to 80 young Britons and 250 to 300 people from across Europe  to join al-Qaeda-linked forces fighting in Syria,” the Hope Not Hate report suggests.

The investigation also highlights links between Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun network and the perpetrators of several major terrorist attacks, including the 7/7 suicide bombings in London.

Choudary is known for his controversial statements and has developed a reputation as a pantomime villain, but Hope Not Hate said he should be considered a “serious player on the international Islamist scene”.

Despite two decades of activism, the 46-year-old Briton has only ever been fined £500 for organising an illegal protest outside the Danish embassy in London. In January 2010, shortly before he become Prime Minister, David Cameron said Choudary needed “to be looked at seriously” because he strays “extremely close to the line of encouraging hatred, extremism and violence”. In June, the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick told a Commons committee that they were “constantly assessing” whether any of Choudary’s “proclamations are breaking the criminal law”.

The report stressed that Choudary and his associate Omar Bakri Mohamed, who founded the banned group al-Muhajiroun, have given people the encouragement to take extreme actions.

Hope Not Hate said at least 70 people linked to al-Muhajiroun and its successor organisations had been convicted of terrorism, terrorist-related offences in the UK or died overseas during the last 14 years.

 The report pointed out that the 7/7 suicide bombers had links to al-Muhajiroun network.

And it said people associated with the groups had also been convicted of two major terrorist plots: a 2004 plan to use fertiliser-based bombs to blow up Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub and the domestic gas network and another that would have seen a bombing campaign over Christmas 2010 targeting Big Ben, the London Eye, the US embassy and other targets.

Hope Not Hate said Choudary’s supporters were in Syria “in numbers”, pointing out that between 50 and 80 had travelled from the UK. “Al-Muhajiroun supporters from London, Birmingham, Luton and Stoke-on-Trent have all definitely gone,” it said.

“Anjem Choudary has become a serious player on the international Islamist scene,” the report said. “Perhaps it is time to start concentrating on his role as a facilitator of terror.

Al-Muhajiroun has quite simply been the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history, according to the report.

H. Mustafa