Interview with Anjem Choudary

Andrew Malone’s account of an interview with Anjem Choudary

On a hot summer afternoon, a man with a microphone stands on a busy London street. He is a tubby figure and sports a black, bushy beard, flecked with grey. He is shrieking at passing shoppers, insisting they follow him - and save their souls.

Teams of young, tough-looking men - all clearly devoted to their leader - dart through the crowds, handing out leaflets and haranguing anyone who questions their message.

From the other side of the street, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a harmless, if colourful, example of citizens making full use of Britain's ancient tradition of free speech.

But there is nothing harmless about what is really going on here. For the man with the microphone is Anjem Choudary, branded the most dangerous man in Britain.

An extremist who believes his sole-calling is to wage holy war against Britain and her 'infidel' allies, he is trying - and succeeding - to prepare the ground for his global Islamic jihad.

Funded by the taxpayer - he claims benefits so that he has plenty of free time to spread his message - Choudary is openly staging these 'Islamic roadshows' across Britain. And their aim is to recruit young British men prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for his chilling cause.

Islamic law in Britain

Exhorting Britain's 1.8 million Muslims to follow his example, Choudary dreams of seeing the black crescent flag, which is the symbol of his organisation, flying over Downing Street, and a draconian form of sharia law imposed across the UK.

He wants alcohol banned, amputations for thieves, and adulterers to be stoned to death.

'People are living in anarchy,' he says. 'There is a rape every minute. Islam has the answer to everything.

'It is a deterrent. If you steal, you know you will face having your hands and feet cut off. Why should I not invite the British people to embrace Islam and save themselves from punishment in the hereafter?'

In the last six weeks, Choudary has staged six 'roadshows' around Britain. He rose to particular prominence when he posted a video on his website of an unidentified 11-year-old white youth called 'Sean' being converted to Islam during a show in Birmingham last month.

This was not an isolated incident. The extent of Choudary's activities in the UK, disclosed here following a Mail investigation, raise disturbing questions about how individuals with known terror links are allowed to flout the law and openly recruit on British streets.

For, to the dismay of anti-terrorism experts and the security services, his recruitment strategy appears to be working. Reports this month revealed that British Islamic militants are fighting alongside extremists intent on overthrowing the government in Pakistan.

'Brummie' fighters

And in Afghanistan, where British forces have already lost 16 men during bloody clashes with the Taliban this month, it has been reported that men with broad English accents have been battling our soldiers. One militant shot dead by the British earlier this year even had an Aston Villa football club tattoo on his body.

'People are always going back and forth to the UK,' reveals Maajid Nawaz, a former militant with links to Choudary, who has since renounced violence.

He added that religious leaders such as Choudary: 'Set the mood music for suicide bombers to dance to.'

According to terrorism experts, Choudary is the recruiting sergeant for what U.S. intelligence dubs Britain's 'Generation Jihad'.

Richard Dart is one of Choudary's protégés. This white British 26-year-old from Weymouth, Dorset, converted to Islam last week. He joined Choudary in a private house in East London and, after swearing oaths on the Koran, was re-named 'Salahuddin' - after the medieval leader who drove King Richard I from Jerusalem during the Crusades.

For years, 'Salahuddin' - the son of teachers - drifted from job to job, working at one point as a security guard at the BBC's Broadcasting House. He drank heavily and didn't know what to do with his life. And then he met a member of Choudary's circle while studying carpentry at a West London college.

The meeting changed his life. 'I'd already gone off pork,' he tells me. 'I had my last drink on holiday in Cyprus last year - just one pint. Michael Jackson's death to me was a sign - he said he was a Muslim, but he didn't live the life of a good Muslim.'

As members of the 'Islamic brotherhood' come up to greet him as we walk down the street, ' Salahuddin' also says he would be happy to fight - and die - overseas for the cause and that Islam must defeat Western aggression.

Insisting the Koran preaches love, he adds: 'The soldiers taking part in these wars are the enemies of Islam so I don't support them in any way nor any man-made government or law. These governments are the terrorists.

'I would love to see sharia law in the UK,' he adds. 'There are a lot of people who need to have fear in their lives. It would bring back standards.

'If there is no fear, people just act on their whims, drinking alcohol and taking drugs and having sex.'

Choudary, for his part, denies he has links to terrorism. During an interview in the Desert Rose Algerian cafe in the heart of London, he plays the fool, saying he has not personally made any bombs. 'But I do make a very good omelette,' he chuckles.

A former lawyer, he understands the pitfalls of telling the 'enemy' too much. Privately, however, he has been secretly taped urging his followers to raise money for Islamic fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying this would help them kill the 'butchers and cowards' from the U.S. and Britain.

Captured Al Qaeda terrorists, held at Guantanamo Bay, have also claimed that Choudary staged a 'camping trip' for militants in 2003, at an Islamic school in East Sussex.

Here, another leading Islamic fundamentalist taught young Britons how to use AK-47s and rocket launchers. Choudary insists they were only 'paintballing'. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, it is an offence to 'invite another to provide money or other property' for the purposes of terrorism. Offenders risk a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

A founding member of extremist groups which are banned in many countries, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun, which praised the 'magnificent' July 7 London terror attacks in 2005 that killed 52 innocent people, Choudary now runs a hardline sect called Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'aah Muntada. It currently has an estimated 1,000 members - and exactly the same aims as earlier banned groups.

Other original members of this organisation are currently in prison, including Simon Keeler, a white Briton who was sentenced to four years in 2008 for raising money for terrorism, and is a devout follower of Osama Bin Laden.

Abu Izzadeen, a Jamaican formerly known as Trevor Brooks, and a close friend of Choudary's, is also serving a prison term after his sermons at the Regent's Park mosque were found to be inciting terrorism and calling for its funding.

Leading voice

In their absence, Choudary is the group's leading voice. He certainly retains impeccable jihadist connections, for he is also right-hand man and close confidant of Omar Bakri, who often addresses Choudary's meetings via video-link from Lebanon.

Known as the 'Tottenham Ayatollah', Bakri is an Islamic firebrand who supports Al-Qaeda and is regarded as a threat to Western security.

Banned from Britain on the orders of the Home Secretary, and now directing operations from the Middle East, Bakri admitted to being in contact with the July 7 suicide bombers and giving them 'religious guidance' at mosques in Leeds and Bradford.

According to former members of his sect, Choudary also holds classes to help new recruits avoid surveillance by British intelligence. He teaches them to regularly change mobile phones and computers so they don't leave an electronic trail.

He certainly doesn't shy away from preaching about jihad.

'Jihad is part of the Koran,' he says. 'What the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Palestine are doing is defending themselves from foreigner fighters coming to kill them. It's outrageous that we get called terrorists if we speak about the right to defend ourselves.'

But Choudary doesn't draw the line at fighting holy war in Asia. He wants the UK to become an Islamic state itself.

Sharia courts throughout Britan

As the Mail revealed last month, there are already at least 85 sharia courts in the UK. These courts rule on civil matters, such as divorce and financial disputes, and make a mockery of the principle that there should be one law for all Britons.

But Choudary believes these courts do not go far enough. He believes Muslim immigrants will eventually breed out the native British population, pointing out that Medina once had just 200 Muslim inhabitants but went on to become the second city of Islam.

This, he says, will pave the way for the implementation of a brutal form of sharia law that forces women to cover themselves completely in public, and bans them from education and employment.

But his message, preached in mosques and private halls around Britain, is attracting an enthusiastic audience.

In addition to 'Salahuddin,' Choudary claims to have converted 25 young men to his cause in the last six weeks alone. Many are former alcoholics and addicts, who now zealously promote Islam and want to see people publicly lashed for consuming alcohol.

Four of these converts agreed to speak to me, even though they regard non-Muslims as 'unclean'.

'It is only permitted for us to speak to you if we are propagating Islam - otherwise we would ignore you,' explains Abdul, 24.

'Of course we must support Osama bin Laden,' adds another of the youths, who refuses to give his name. 'I would be proud to give my life in the name of Islam. We are the oppressed. We are involved in a defensive jihad to protect ourselves.'

Benefits of Islam

None of those I speak to let real work get in the way of their holy war; Choudary's recruits are told that it is their Muslim duty to claim benefits, ensuring that they make no contribution to the 'enemy' British state.

Choudary leads by example. Now separated from his wife and three children, for years he has received more than £1,700 a month in benefits from the British taxpayer.

Choudary is the son of immigrants from Pakistan, part of a wave of Muslims who came to Britain from the sub-continent in the Sixties.

But he found the strictures of religion suffocating as a child growing up in Kent and as soon as he left home, he went wild.

As a medical student at Southampton University, he was known as Andy and was a hard-drinking womaniser with a fondness for cannabis and LSD. So bad was his drinking and drug-taking that he flunked his first-year medical exams, forcing him to switch to commercial law.

He moved to London after university, teaching English to foreign language students and, say colleagues, trying to sleep with as many of them as possible. In the Nineties, after qualifying as a lawyer, he became bitter and depressed when his application for a lucrative post at a City law firm was rejected.

He then started attending mosques around London, and was introduced to Bakri and Abu Hamza, the hook-handed Islamic firebrand who also supports terrorism in this country and abroad.

Choudary stopped drinking and womanising and grew a beard. He was 'radicalised', deciding that Islam was the answer to his problems. And now he wants to foist his extremist views on the rest of us.

'Dangerous' appeasement

So why is he allowed to preach hate on Britain's streets? Many anti-terror experts believe Britain's tolerant policy towards Islamic radicals is dangerously misguided. Quoting Churchill's famous views on appeasement, one told me it was like 'feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat you last'.

Tory MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of Parliament's counter terrorism committee, certainly believes that there should be an urgent police investigation into Choudary's activities.

'He is subverting and suborning vulnerable youngsters with a view to turning them into mujahedin,' he says.

'We should focus attention on banning organisations which poison the minds of young Muslims and are conveyor belts to terrorism.'

But back at the Algerian cafe, Choudary again tries to persuade me to convert to Islam.

'We'd have to give you a new name - how about Osama?' he smirks.

Then he gets to his feet; the interview is over. With his four minders - burly men in Islamic garb - he strolls out into the London streets.

As they leave, they all snigger at a private gag. Even wearing smirks, they look dangerous. The joke, it seems, is on us.

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