London Bridge Attacker Directly Tied to Radical Cleric Anjem Choudary

Usman Khan One of 19 Choudary Disciples to Carry Out Terror Attacks

(New York, N.Y.) - On November 29, 2019, Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist on early release from prison, murdered two people and wounded three others in a knife attack near the London Bridge. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, it was revealed that Khan was part of the al-Muhajiroun Islamist network, founded and led by convicted terrorist Anjem Choudary. Choudary and al-Muhajiroun have been linked to more than 600 extremists. Al-Muhajiroun is an extremist group that is banned in the United Kingdom and has been reportedly linked to almost one-quarter of the terror plots in the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2016. Choudary was arrested in 2014 and sentenced in 2016 after he publicly pledged allegiance to ISIS. However, in 2018, he was released on parole after serving only half of his sentence.

Khan was a former member of Islam4UK, an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun that was created by Choudary after the group dissolved in 2004 ahead of the government ban. He was one of nine men arrested in England on December 20, 2010, in connection with a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange on Christmas Eve. They sought to launch a coordinated bomb-and-gun attack and considered also attacking Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye. Khan was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2012 but was released in December 2018.

In its report, Anjem Choudary’s Ties to Extremists, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) documented 143 entities, 110 violent individuals and 33 organizations, that Choudary influenced or communicated with during his career. Of the 110 individuals, 19 carried out terror attacks, 50 attempted to carry out terror attacks, 19 became—or attempted to become—foreign fighters in Syria for ISIS and others, and 36 are Islamist propagandists or recruiters. Notable violent extremists directly linked to Choudary include the murderers of soldier Lee Rigby, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, London Bridge attackers Rachid Redouane and Khuram Shazad Butt, and suicide bomber Bilal Mohammed.

To read the CEP report, Anjem Choudary’s Ties to Extremists, please click here.

To read the CEP resource, Anjem Choudary, please click here.