British radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, known for his links to numerous global terror plots, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for directing a terrorist organization.
Choudary, 57, was found guilty last week of leading al-Muhajiroun, a group banned as a terrorist organization over a decade ago, and of encouraging others to support its extremist activities.
“Organizations like yours normalize violence in pursuit of an ideological cause,” Judge Mark Wall said during the sentencing at London’s Woolwich Crown Court. “Their existence emboldens individuals to commit acts they might not otherwise undertake. They create divisions among people who could otherwise live together in peaceful coexistence.”
Judge Wall sentenced Choudary to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 28 years to be served before he is eligible for parole, minus the time he has already spent in custody since his arrest.
Once the most prominent Islamist preacher in Britain, Choudary gained notoriety for praising the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and for declaring his desire to convert Buckingham Palace into a mosque.
Anjem Choudary had previously been imprisoned in Britain in 2016 for encouraging support for Islamic State, and was released in 2018 after serving half of his five-and-a-half-year sentence.
On Tuesday, Prosecutor Tom Little stated that Choudary became “the caretaker emir” of al-Muhajiroun after fellow Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed was jailed in Lebanon in 2014.
Choudary’s lawyer, Paul Hynes, argued that al-Muhajiroun had become “little more than a husk of an organisation” and claimed that nearly all terrorist acts associated with the group had already occurred.
However, Judge Mark Wall rejected this argument, stating that al-Muhajiroun remained “a radical organisation intent on spreading sharia law to as much of the world as possible, using violent means where necessary.”
