London Bridge attack: Usman Khan was student and personal friend of Anjem Choudary

Not a surprise. From the Telegraph

The London Bridge attacker was a student and personal friend of Anjem Choudary, the notorious Islamist hate preacher. 

Usman Khan,  a convicted terrorist released less than seven years into a 16-year prison sentence for a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange, had Anjem Choudary’s private mobile phone number stored on his phone at the time of his initial arrest, the Henry Jackson Society has found.

Khan was one of a series of Al-Muhajiroun connected terrorists to be released over a six-month period beginning in the Autumn of 2018.  He was known to have attended a series of Al-Muhajiroun protests and street stalls in the Midlands area prior to his arrest.

Before his conviction for the LSE terror plot,  police had previously raided his home in Tunstall over concerns about his links to Choudary.     

Dr Paul Stott a research fellow at the Centre on Radicalisation and Terrorism at Henry Jackson Society, said that “all these years later, and Anjem Choudary’s one-time acolytes are still butchering members of the public on our streets. . . . Usman Khan was a loyal and integral member of Choudary’s inner-circle and we know him to have been highly regarded by Choudary.”

Dr Stott added that 25 per cent of all Islamist terrorists have some sort of “link to Choudary” and that the “security services must consider immediately recalling Choudary to prison until the threat posed by him and his affiliates has stabilised”. 

He was heard mentioning Choudary in 2010 during a bugged conversation later part of the evidence at his terrorism trial in 2012. This was either constructive criticism or contrast, but goes to confirming close acquaintance. The links to local newspapers I used in 2012 are not all extant now, but this is what I blogged during the trial.

During the late-night meeting on December 4, 2010, Khan contrasted the action he was planning in support of jihad with the passive approach of Muslims like radical cleric Anjem Choudary. “Brothers like Anjem, they ain’t going nowhere,” he said.

Abdul Miah (co-defendant at the 2012 trial)  was bugged as he spoke to Chowdhury on December 4 2010, using football as a code for their terrorist plans and referring to the Stoke members of the fundamentalist group as “guests”.