By Daniel Sandford, @BBCDanielS,
Home Affairs Correspondent, BBC News
Undercover officers in the US recorded lectures by radical preacher Anjem Choudary which show he was the director of a group banned in the UK under terrorism legislation, a court has heard.
Mr Choudary, 57, faces charges including that he “directed” the group Al-Muhajiroun.
He is on trial at Woolwich Crown Court alongside Khaled Hussein, 29, from Edmonton in Canada, who is charged with being a member of a banned organisation.
Both men deny the charges.
Opening the prosecution, Tom Little KC, said both men had a “radical mindset”.
He told the court that Mr Choudhary, from Ilford, east London, had directed Al-Muhajiroun for a “significant period” but “bided his time” following a number of arrests.
Mr Choudary faces charges of directing a terrorist organisation, being a member of a banned organisation and supporting a banned organisation.
The prosecution said that he was “directing” the banned organisation Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) from 2014 onwards.
Mr Little KC told the jury that terrorist organisations were not like a sports club or a gym where you signed up for membership. They “lurk in the shadows seeking to avoid detection,” he said.
Mr Little KC said Al-Muhajiroun was not always active.
“There were times when arrests and interventions limited what they were able to do,” he said. “But we suggest Anjem Choudary never gave up. He bided his time.”
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.”
