Emma Webb

Is jailing Anjem Choudary the best idea?

Don’t let off your celebratory party poppers just yet! Anjem Choudary may be facing jail, but he is a slippery man – an ex-lawyer always careful to push the boundaries of the law he despised without breaking it – so don’t think he won’t try to play a bad hand to his advantage.

There’s a phrase about ‘never wasting a good crisis’. And I have no doubt that is precisely what Choudary will do. The judge could order him to be suspended, David-Blaine-style, in a glass box and he would probably find a way to radicalise people using semaphore.

A forthcoming study by The Henry Jackson Society think-tank has found that between 1999 and 2015, 23 per cent of all convicted Islamist terrorists in the UK had direct links with Choudary’s now proscribed al-Muhajiroun. And one in ten had a proven personal relationship with him.

Do we really think that in prison—a potential hotbed of radicalisation—his radicalising will stop? If we don’t go about this properly, Choudary could find himself with a captive audience behind bars.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in