How London Bridge terrorist was linked to notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary before knife rampage & bomb plot
THE London Bridge terrorist was a student of hate preacher Anjem Choudary before he was caged for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange, it has emerged.
Usman Khan, 28, from Staffordshire, was shot dead by police yesterday after stabbing two people to death while wearing a fake suicide vest.
Police said he was “known to authorities” after he was convicted in 2012 for terror offences and freed last December.
Choudary’s private mobile number was found on Khan‘s phone at the time of his arrest, .
Khan was one of the al-Muhajiroun connected terrorists who were released starting in 2018.
Choudary had started regrouping to come out “harder than before”, a former member of his group al-Muhajiroun told
He founded and led the notorious now-banned UK terror network before it was renamed Islam4UK.
Dr Paul Stott, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, today told The Daily Telegraph that”all these years later, and Anjem Choudary’s one-time acolytes are still butchering members of the public on our streets”.
He added that 25 per cent of all Islamist terrorists have some sort of “link to Choudary “.
TERROR LINKS
Dr Scott said the “security services must consider immediately recalling Choudary to prison until the threat posed by him and his affiliates has stabilised”.
Choudary was jailed for five-and-a-half years in 2016 after making speeches urging Muslims to support ISIS.
He was freed from Belmarsh Prison on October 2018 – after serving just half of his sentence.
The hate preacher and his sidekick Mohammad Mizanur Rahman were convicted after they signed an oath of allegiance to the terror group after it declared an Islamic Caliphate in July 2014.
They also recorded speeches uploaded onto YouTube in which Choudary called for Islam to achieve “world domination” with the black flag flying from Downing Street and the White House and for “kuffar” non-believers to be executed.
At the time of his sentencing, the hate preacher had been linked to 15 terror plots over 20 years and had connections with hundreds of British jihadists who had gone to fight in Syria.
Choudary was released on licence and is banned from leaving London.
He was last snapped in May leaving his East London home.
‘SERIOUS JIHADIST’
Khan was known to attend al-Muhajiroun events such as “poppy-burning” and “dawah stalls” in the Midlands.
He was originally from Tunstall and was was arrested in 2010 in a major counter-terrorism operation.
Khan was jailed as part of a nine-man terror group who plotted to bomb the London Stock Exchange and build a terrorist training camp in Kashmir.
The men were inspired by al-Qaeda and had been under surveillance by MI5.
Six of the nine plotters jailed were personally taught by Choudary,
reported in 2012 how Khan and two other plotters were frustrated with Choudary and decided they would do their own thing.
Mr Justice Wilkie, the judge in the case, said the group’s actions showed a “serious, long-term venture into terrorism” and could have resulted atrocities across the UK.
The judge branded Khan and two plotters as “the more serious jihadists” of the group.
He was sentenced in 2012 to indeterminate detention for “public protection” with a minimum jail term of eight years, which would have allowed him to be kept behind bars longer.
However, in 2013 the Court of Appeal quashed the sentence and replaced it with a 16-year-fixed term, of which Khan should serve half in prison.
The Parole Board said in a statement this morning they had “no involvement” in Khan’s release.
It added he appeared “to have been released automatically on licence (as required by law), without ever being referred to the Board”.
