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RADICAL CLERIC ANJEM Choudary has been jailed for five-and-a-half years after being convicted of encouraging support for Islamic State (IS) jihadists.
Supporters of the 49-year-old and his co-defendant Mohammed Mizanur Rahman – who received the same sentence – shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) from the public gallery as the judge announced his decision, according to an AFP journalist.
Judge Timothy Holroyde said Choudary was “calculating and dangerous” and had shown no remorse in a ruling handed down at London’s Old Bailey court.
Dressed in a white robe, Choudary showed no emotion as the sentence was passed. The judge said:
A significant proportion of those listening to your words would be impressionable persons looking to you for guidance on how to act.
Sue Hemming from the Crown Prosecution Service said both men were “fully aware that Daesh (IS) is a proscribed terrorist group responsible for brutal activities and that what they themselves were doing was illegal.”
Prominent radical preacher
A jury convicted both men in July. Choudary is the former head in Britain of Islam4UK or al-Muhajiroun, a now banned group co-founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad that called for Islamic law in Britain.
For two decades, the former lawyer who is of Pakistani descent, managed to stay on the right side of the law, becoming Britain’s most prominent radical preacher.
Among those radicalised by Muhajiroun were the suicide bombers who killed 52 people on London’s public transport system in July 2005, and the men who murdered soldier Lee Rigby in the capital in 2013, police say.
Commander Dean Haydon, head of counter-terrorism at London’s Metropolitan Police, earlier said:
There is no one within the counter-terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations.
He said an oath of allegiance made in July 2014 was a “turning point”, giving police the evidence they needed to prove that the men supported IS.
The father-of-five previously hit the headlines for organising a pro-Osama bin Laden event in London in 2011.
He also belonged to a group that burned poppies, the symbol of remembrance for deaths in war, during an Armistice Day protest in the British capital in 2010.
No matter how you dress it up the truth is that all governments of the day have sought to deny citizens their rights and entitlements based on the fact that citizens have no knowledge of their entitlements, how to qualify like signing for credits to be entitled to a pension when they reach pensionable age if they are out of the workforce for caring roles or what exactly their medical card covers before charges are levied or indeed if they have a long term illness that they may be entitled to medication. In the case above. it is galling to hear Watt say “I don’t think anyone disputes that it was unfair … that’s different to legal entitlement.” There are none so blind as those who will not see and it is those most in need to are treated with such distain.
Is something is wrong. And you know it’s wrong. Saying but nobody told me it was wrong is just plain stupid.
Still , you have to have some sympathy for the tax payers and governments of the current era .They are expected to compensate everyone back to the foundation of the state ..I mean all the descendents of the executed 1916 leaders should be compensated should they not but by whom ,Britain I suppose .As for monies paid by nursing home residents many of whom have passed away is that to go to their ‘loved’ ones for extensions to houses, sun holidays and all the rest . Special needs people in care homes are frequently not capable of making a will and their money will go to random relatives who may have never visited them once when they were alive .We are a grand little country shure
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