Anjem Choudary: Radical preacher directed banned group, court hears

The prosecution said the other man in the dock, Khaled Hussein, is also known as Abu Aisha Al Kanadi and is a Canadian national.

“It is clear on the evidence that he respected if not idolised Anjem Choudary and we say would do whatever he was asked to by him,” Tom Little KC said.

Mr Little KC suggested the pair shared a “warped and twisted mindset”.

In 2016 Mr Choudary was convicted of inviting support for the Islamic State group. He was released from prison in October 2018, and the restrictions imposed on him – which prevented him preaching – ended in July 2021.

“The conviction undoubtedly made him more cautious in who he would speak to openly,” Mr Little KC told the jury. “However, his desire to further the aims of ALM caused even him sometimes to let down his guard.”

Mr Little told the jury that Mr Choudary had directed Al-Muhajiroun for a number of years and more recently had “encouraged support for it in lectures to the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS)”.

The prosecution says this society was based in New York and part of Al-Muhajiroun.

“They were one and the same,” Mr Little KC told the court.

In a video recorded in 2016, Mr Choudary referred to Islamic Thinkers as “our branch in America”.

But unbeknown to him, the group had been infiltrated by two undercover officers in the US who attended a number of lectures and classes given by Mr Choudary and recorded them.

The prosecution said that Mr Hussein attended some lectures online, and assisted Mr Choudary.

As early as December 2020 he was in contact with a man in a Facebook chat, unaware that he was an undercover officer.

Mr Hussein was also in contact with undercover officers in Canada. In September 2021 he sent one a message saying “The Islamic Thinkers Society are actually Al-Muhajiroun North America.”

In a public post on Reddit in April 2022 Khaled Hussein said that he was leaving ITS. But the next month he dialled into an ITS Zoom call, the jury was told.

In June 2022 Anjem Choudary gave an online lecture to ITS entitled “The Obligation of Dawah’.

“It’s plain as pikestaff isn’t it?” Tom Little KC told the jury. “ITS are Al Muhajiroun North America.”