Anjem Choudary was sentenced to 5.5 years yesterday.

As he was sentenced, Choudary’s supporters stood up in the public gallery and shouted: “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for God is greatest. He smiled and disappeared down to the cells.

For 20 years Choudary has been the police’s headache – now he is the prison service’s. He will start time in the high security unit – a prison within a prison – at HMP Belmarsh in south-east London. Only a few of the most dangerous individuals in the country are ever held there at one time – and the priority will be keeping him apart from the impressionable minds whom Mr Justice Holroyde said he did so much to influence.

Whether the

Well at least it’s clear that Anjem Choudary was in no sense a joke. The Daily Express reports that Scotland Yard wanted to arrest him for years but MI5 said no.

Counter terror officers believed they had enough evidence to build a case against the radical Islamic State sympathiser but were reportedly blocked from doing so because he was a vital part of MI5’s ongoing investigation.

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Serious questions were raised as to why Choudary was allowed to continue spreading his Islamist poison across Britain for more than 20 years, but now a counter terror source has said MI5 were responsible.

Following his conviction of inviting support for ISIS it emerged Choudary was involved in at least 15 terror

The Guardian explains more about Choudary’s activities.

Anjem Choudary and his extremist groups are believed to have inspired at least 100 people from Britain into terrorism, including organisations committed to campaigns of murder against the west, the Guardian has learned.

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Documents from intelligence sources say his groups were at the heart of the Islamist movement in Britain, which has been left facing a “severe” threat of jihadi attack.

The defense of free speech depends to some extent on an absence of people like Choudary. If you have people who really are “inspiring” others to commit mass murders, then it becomes a lot more difficult to say those people have an absolute right to free speech. It’s no longer … Read the rest

Dominic Casciani takes a closer look at Anjem Choudary’s conviction, in a piece that was clearly already written and just waiting for the news to go public. Maajid Nawaz also has an already-written piece, that will be in the Times tomorrow.

The scenes would change – but not the words.

The flag of Islam will fly over Downing Street, was his favourite prediction, followed by some kind of rhetorical flourish. “The Muslims are rising to establish the Sharia… Pakistan, Afghanistan and perhaps, my dear Muslims, Londonistan.”

He would greet the journalists with a smile, and some guile, dressed up as charm.

One day outside Regent’s Park Mosque (he was banned from ranting inside its premises) he told the crowd

Breaking news. Anjem Choudary convicted of inviting people to support Islamic State.

Choudary, 49, drummed up support for the militant group in a series of talks posted on YouTube, the Old Bailey heard.

He was convicted alongside his confidant, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman.

The Met Police said many people tried for serious offences “attended lectures or speeches given by these men”.

Counter-terrorism chiefs have spent almost 20 years trying to bring Choudary, a father of five, to trial, blaming him, and the proscribed organisations which he helped to run, for radicalising young men and women.

But it’s tricky, because free speech.

Both men were charged with one offence of inviting support for IS – which is contrary to section 12