Later this month, we will witness the release of Anjem Choudary, a notorious Islamist hate preacher and a key node in the banned terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun (previously known as “Al Ghurabaa” and “The Saved Sect”). He will be freed from jail after serving what is half of a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for encouraging Muslims to join Islamic State, via a series of YouTube talks published online.
Choudary’s reach was powerful. He is believed to have motivated at least 100 people from the United Kingdom to pursue terrorism. Followers of Al-Muhajiroun included Khuram Butt, one of the London Bridge attackers who murdered eight people in June 2017, and Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013.
After its creation in 1996, members of Al-Muhajiroun toured areas in the United Kingdom with large Muslim populations in a recruitment drive for their group. They became notorious for their large and well-attended events and rallies, including a September 2002 conference titled "The Magnificent 19", which praised the September 11 attacks. To evade the law, they were able to operate under different aliases. Al-Muhajiroun went largely unchallenged by the British state, who would discern the differences in ‘violent’ and ‘non-violent’ extremism, and their role in terrorism, much later. The group and its various aliases were finally proscribed in 2010 under the UK Terrorism Act (2000), though its previous iteration of ‘Al Ghurabaa’ and ‘The Saved Sect’ was proscribed in July 2006.
The full influence of the organisation and Choudary’s power continues to be seen. Work I am doing on court cases at the moment indicates that many families were inspired by the preaching of Choudary, taking their young and vulnerable children to rallies and indoctrinating them with his words. To many, he was seen as a celebrity, and the organisation as a network. Wives in these families attended the female ‘sisterhood’, run by Choudary’s wife, Rubana Akhtar (also known as 'Um Luqman').
Now, with Choudary’s release, we must ensure that history does not repeat itself. To do this, the influence of extremist preachers in the online space cannot be ignored.
This will require a reconfiguration of existing laws, both offline and online. We must avoid situations, for example, where technology is used to promote hate preachers. This was the case recently with Shah Jalal Hussain, who, following his release from prison three years ago, used Facebook to endorse Islamist clerics, solicit funds for terrorist suspects, and condone the stoning of adulterers to death. Hussain is a former member of Al-Muhajiroun and has been convicted of terrorism offences on two occasions.
The currently existing Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs) were introduced in 2011, and replaced a previous system of control orders. TPIMs make it easier for those being monitored to use the internet, but still carry restrictions on who they can meet and where they can go, including foreign travel bans. Suspects can abscond from a TPIM (two did so in 2012 and 2013), so a determined terrorist is unlikely to be deterred from carrying out an attack under one.
TPIMs will not allow for the supervision of the large number of extremists who are anticipated to leave prison this year. Along with Choudary, an expected 80 of the 193 terms issued for terrorism offences between 2007 and 2016 will run out by the end of 2018.
Many, including the Lord Carlile of Berriew (the former independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation in the UK) have argued for the re-introduction of the previous system of control orders. Control orders, introduced in 2005 by Tony Blair’s Labour government, contain effective measures to use against those British nationals who remain a concern to our security, such as Choudary and other members of Al-Muhajiroun. But even within control orders, we must stress for more stringent regulation and new prohibitions on communication, including the use and exploitation of social media by known extremists, and those recently released from jail for terrorism-related concerns.
The risk posed by high level extremists, and their continued celebrity appeal both online and offline, cannot be overemphasized. By strengthening the toolkit available to our security services, we can ensure that young people, vulnerable individuals, and entire families do not fall for the same toxic ideology again.
