THE world is a safer place today with Anjem Choudary safely locked up behind bars for the foreseeable future.
It would be easy to dismiss him as an armchair warrior spouting clichéd diatribes like the ranting white radical convert in excellent 2010 film Four Lions.
His malign influence, though, is indelibly linked to some of the worst terrorist atrocities in this country and abroad — the savage murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013, Paris in 2015, the mass murders in Westminster and London Bridge in 2017.
Choudary’s prints were on all these outrages and many more.
He inspired a generation of young British Muslims to travel to Syria to help build an Islamic Caliphate, beguiling them with a vision of paradise promising free houses, food and money — not the hellhole it proved to be.
As The Sun’s Crime Editor, covering terrorism since the early 1990s, I have seen Choudary being linked time and time again to acts of barbarity carried out by his acolytes.
Infuriatingly, he was allowed to extend his malevolent influence while living off state benefits with his wife and five children.
It begs the question: How did he manage to get away with it for so long?
The answer is complex because I suspect Choudary was something of a double-edged sword for the counter-terrorism police and security services.
His sinister impact reached literally across the globe, as devotees delivered his message of holy war with guns, bombs and knives.
Yet Choudary would also have been a gold mine of intelligence for the authorities, who monitored young jihadists coming into his orbit.
Another factor behind his delayed incarceration was his cunning, and training as a lawyer.
Choudary used his expertise to stay on the right side of the law, even if it was by the tightest of margins at times.
I first noticed his name in the early 2000s, as right-hand man to Omar Bakri Muham-mad, the so-called Tottenham Ayatollah, who was Choudary’s mentor.
Together, they had set up the Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) group in 1996, with Bakri as the front- man and Choudary working as his assistant.
The group was modelled on the hardline Islamic morality, hisbah, which the Taliban employed to rule with a rod of iron in Afghanistan.
But in Choudary’s case, it smacked of hypocrisy.
While a law student in Southampton, using the name Andy, he smoked drugs, viewed pornography and indulged in casual sex.
Choudary later returned from university to Woolwich, South East London, where he grew up, and re-engaged with his devoutly religious family.
His father approached Bakri, visiting his local mosque, and asked him to mentor his son.
His sinister impact reached literally across the globe, as devotees delivered his message of holy war with guns, bombs and knives
A hate preacher was born.
ALM set out to cause outrage, hailing the 9/11 suicide attackers as “the magnificent 19” and became apologists for terrorism.
When Bakri fled to Lebanon after the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005, fearing a crackdown on hate preachers, Choudary took over ALM.
He organised a demo outside the Danish Embassy in London in protest at cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, at which one man wore a fake suicide bomb belt.
Choudary came under investigation for his role in facilitating the protest and was later convicted for failing to notify the police about it in advance.
I learned he was kept under surveillance during the investigation and observed making trips to the King’s Cross area of the capital.
His comrades would not have been amused to know who he was visiting. It made a mockery of his fire-and-brimstone belief in Sharia Law.
He also shamelessly exploited Britain’s tolerant democracy to call for an Islamic black flag to be raised over Downing Street, and Buckingham Palace to be turned into a mosque.
He said Muslims had a duty to protect their families from celebrating Christmas Day, as “its observance will lead to hellfire.” And he went on to bite the hand which fed him, as his followers burned poppies on Remembrance Day.
Salt was poured on to the nation’s wounds when Choudary’s motley crew demonstrated at Wootton Bassett as the bodies of British servicemen and women were being flown into the airbase from Afghanistan.
“British soldiers burn in hell!” read their placards.
ALM had been outlawed by the British Government in 2010 but morphed into a succession of groups.
My only hope now is that Choudary is not viewed by any impressionable young Muslims as a martyr — instead as a hypocritical coward
Yet Choudary seemed to be untouchable, with Muslims also coming under fire from him and his followers. Muslim Patrols were mounted in East London to harass anyone of the Islamic faith who did not share their militant views.
Choudary eventually crossed on to the wrong side of the legal margin when he pledged allegiance to IS in 2014.
He did so quite knowingly after his hand was forced by followers in Syria criticising him for watching from the sidelines and not taking direct action himself.
Faced with a loss of face and reputation, Choudary deliberately broke the law.
I watched at the Old Bailey in 2016 as he was convicted of encouraging support for IS and jailed for five-and-half years.
But not for one moment did I believe then that it was the last we would hear from Choudary.
His ego and hunger for publicity would not have allowed it.
And so it proved to be.
My only hope now is that Choudary is not viewed by any impressionable young Muslims as a martyr — instead as a hypocritical coward.
