UK: Anjem Choudary Released from Prison

by Soeren Kern • October 20, 2018 at 5:00 am

"I believe we are underestimating the potency and danger of the radicalizers who don't carry knives, guns and overtly plot terrorist attacks but who pollute the minds of young Muslim men." -- Richard Walton, former head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command
"I asked the guy who spoke to him if the de-radicalization program had worked and he said, 'No, he's got worse. He's hardened. He speaks in the mind-set of the victim. He sees himself as a martyr the state tried to silence.'" -- Fiyaz Mughal, head of the anti-extremist group Faith Matters
Choudary is now considering mounting a legal challenge to the strict conditions of his release, according to the Telegraph. It reported that he has applied for legal aid funding, at taxpayer expense, to bring his action against government ministers, and arguing the parole conditions breach his human rights.

The Islamist firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary, described as Britain's "most dangerous extremist," has been released from prison after serving only half of the five-and-a-half-year sentence he received in 2016 for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

Prison authorities could not prevent his release: under British sentencing guidelines, prisoners — even those who are still a risk to the public — automatically become eligible for release under license (parole) after serving half their terms.

Prime Minister Theresa May has downplayed concerns over Choudary's release; British counter-terrorism authorities, however, say they are worried that he will re-exert influence on hundreds of followers upon his release. The cost to British taxpayers of keeping Choudary under surveillance is expected to exceed £2 million (€2.25 million; $2.6 million) a year, compared to the £50,000 (€57,000; $65,000) to keep him in prison.

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Britain's Grooming Gangs: Part 1

by Denis MacEoin • October 20, 2018 at 5:00 am

As far back as 2013, Britain's Attorney General stated in the House of Lords that 27 police forces were then investigating no fewer than 54 alleged gangs involved in child sexual grooming.
Last year, Shahid Javed Burki, a former Pakistani finance minister and vice-president of the World Bank, spoke out about the treatment of women in his country, arguing that the low status given to women has had serious social, demographic, educational, and financial effects.
This problem is, in some measure, reflected in the UK, where Muslim women (mainly of Pakistani origin) face limitations on their participation in the workplace, in higher education, and even knowledge of the English language -- matters examined by Dame Louise Casey in her 2016 government review into opportunity and integration.
Bringing Pakistani attitudes into the UK, often within segregated communities, only serves to perpetuate the belief that women are intrinsically the inferiors of men in all respects.

Rotherham, England was the first city to experience child sexual grooming gangs on a large scale, and the site of the UK's largest ever child sexual abuse scandal. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

On July 24, 2018, Britain's Home Secretary, conservative MP Sajid Javid, issued orders for research into the ethnic origins of the country's many sexual grooming gangs that had involved large numbers of loosely-termed "Asian men", who, over many years, had taken vulnerable young white British girls to use or pass on for sexual purposes. Most of the men have, Javid has stated been of Pakistani extraction, which makes the Home Secretary's intervention significant. Javid's father came, as did many other Pakistani immigrants, from Punjab, and with only £1 to his name. He became a bus driver, then a clothing store owner. Yet his five sons have all become fully integrated Britons, with successful careers in business, politics and the public sector. They are all models of second-generation immigrant achievement, miles away from the men in the gangs. Reporting on the Javid family, The Times wrote:

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