Terror suspect who sparked manhunt pleads guilty

From the BBC. 

A terror suspect who cut off an electronic monitoring tag and fled his home has pleaded guilty to breaching counter terror rules.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is a senior member of the banned terrorist group al-Muhajiroun.

Appearing at the Old Bailey by video link from prison, he admitted six breaches of his Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM).

On 15 September last year, the man – known as LF – cut off his tag, obtained an unauthorised mobile phone, ordered a taxi to London, and left his home in the middle of the night.

He was arrested within 24 hours.

Prosecutor Kate Wilkinson said it is “not safe to assume he was not motivated by terrorist related activity”.

Judge Anthony Leonard QC said it was a “serious matter” and that he would pass sentence on 22 February.

Last week LF was one of two men who lost an appeal against the measures placed on them.

The pair were the first people to be made the subject of a TPIM for the second time.

LF is a leading radicaliser in al-Muhajiroun (ALM), an outlawed organisation that has been linked to multiple attacks and plots, including at Fishmongers’ Hall in 2019, Westminster Bridge in 2017, and the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013.

He was an associate of Khuram Butt, the ringleader of the London Bridge attackers who murdered eight people in June 2017.

In 2019 LF was convicted of breaching his first TPIM, but was handed a suspended sentence by a judge at Kingston Crown Court.

Following this, he continued to engage with other ALM members and was subsequently placed under the new measures in November that year after he was found to be involved in fresh “terrorist related activity”.

Unless this man is an English convert to Islam, which I doubt, then there is machinery in place to strip him of citizenship (if he even holds it) and expel or deport him as an undesirable. Terrorism at that level could even be construed as treason, as it is a process to favour a foreign power or bring about the imposition of a foreign regime. I wish the authorities would use these.