Abu Izzadeen and Simon Keeler were sentenced to four and a half years at Kingston Crown Court today after they were found guilty of fundraising for and inciting terrorism.
Izzadeen, tried under the name Omar Brooks, and Keeler were convicted on the basis of speeches they gave at London’s Regent’s Park Mosque on November 9, 2004.
At the time, US-led forces in Iraq were fighting in Falluja. The men urged their audience to fight British and American forces in Iraq and to donate money to fund terrorism, calling September 11th 2001 a “great day”.
Izzadeen was filmed saying:
“He who joins the British Army, he who joins the American army, he is a mortal Kaffir. And his only hokum (punishment) is for his head to be removed. Indeed whoever changes his deen (Muslim code of life) kill him.”
The jury were played clips of Izzadeen and Keeler speaking about jihad and praising Osama bin Laden during the ten week trial at Kingston Crown Court.
Also found guilty of inciting terrorism were Abdul Saleem, sentenced to three years, nine months and Ibrahim Hassan, sentenced to two years, nine months. Abdul Mahid and Shah Jilal Hussain, both found guilty of fundraising for terrorists, were jailed for two years. Hussain was sentenced to a further three months for breaking his bail conditions.
"These are extremely serious offences,” said John McDowall, head of the Metropolitan Police Service's Counter Terrorism Command. “They deliberately set out to incite people to carry out terrorist acts."
Both British-born Muslim converts were members of Omar Bakri’s extreme Islamist organisation, Al-Muhajiroun, which was banned in 2004 under the terms of the Terrorism Act of 2000.
In an interview on BBC’s Newsnight yesterday, Anjem Choudary, former head of Al-Muhajiroun, refused to condemn the actions of the convicted.
Choudary, who organised the February 2006 demonstration in London against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, said that the trial was unfair and that the jury had been “whipped into frenzy by the Bush Blair Corporation”.