Anjem Choudary to be released on licence in October 2018. He will be given his own “safe house” and be eligible to claim benefits when he leaves jail for recruiting for Islamic State.
Costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds, Anjem will be allowed to claim benefits as well as be given a house.
There are valid concerns of his forming a new pro-terror group with other recently released extremists. He will be placed under surveillance, as will other members of his banned al-Muhajiroun (ALM) group, and banned from the internet as well as, given a curfew for the protection of the public.
A senior counterterrorism official told The Sunday Times that “There’s a lot of apprehension and concern that Choudary will re-energise the ALM network when he comes out.”
Which begs the question of why he is being released. Surely there would need to be confidence that he was ‘reformed’ before allowing his release or reducing his sentence.
Choudary has links to many terrorists, including the London Bridge terrorist Khuram Butt, the “new Jihadi John” Siddhartha Dhar, and failed suicide bomber Omar Sharif. Choudary was jailed at the same time as Mizanur Rahman, 35, both for the same crime of encouraging support for Islamic State. Both will be released in the coming days or weeks after serving just half their five and a half year sentences.
Considered more dangerous than his former tutor, Mr. Rahman was groomed at just 17-years-old by Mr. Choudary and hate cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed of the Finsbury Park Mosque, which has longstanding links to terror and radical Islam. The two men are prevented from meeting each other or other members of al-Muhajiroun, and its various representations.
One source stated of Mr. Rhaman who studied web design, set up secret forums for extremists while working to spread radical Islam on social media: “We will have to wait and see what happens when they are released. It’s fair to say that Rahman is more computer literate than Choudary and younger and more energetic. That is a big worry.”
It is believed that any attempts by the government to curb the benefits for terrorists and extremists would be legally challenged. Choudary, 51, is a trained solicitor who once urged all of his followers to claim job seeker’s allowance, or as he called it “jihad seeker’s allowance”.
Rahman has previously been convicted of soliciting killings by calling for the beheading and annihilation of people who insult Islam and for terrorist attacks in Denmark, Spain and France. He called for the death of British and American soldiers in Iraq: “We want to see them coming home in body bags. We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad.
“We want to see the Mujahideen shoot down their planes the way we shoot down birds. We want to see their tanks burn in the way we burn their flags.”
Now, the British taxpayer, for whom the evidence reveals extremism and hatred for those same British taxpayers, will be paying for these men’s homes and benefits.