Radical Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary must be allowed to preach on the streets of London even though he is on police bail over suspected terror offences, a judge has ruled.
Choudary, 47, and six Islamist associates, were given new bail terms at Westminster magistrates court in relation to encouraging terrorism and being members of a proscribed group.
District judge Howard Riddle ordered that the terror suspects’ religious freedom must be respected as he removed one of their bail conditions, which prevented them from setting up stalls for religious outreach work known in Islam as “dawah”, while investigations continued.
“The dawah stalls are a significant part of the current investigation,” Riddle said.
“However, it is accepted that the dawah stall has an ostensible purpose to spread the word of Islam and to proselytise. Religious freedom is of considerable significance.”
Choudary and his brother Yazandi were arrested on 25 September along with Shakil Chapra, Siddartha Dhar, Abdul Muhid, Mohammed Rahman, Mohammed Shamsuddin and Anthony Small, the former British and Commonwealth champion boxer.
The court heard at a previous hearing that Dhar, known as Abu Rumaysah, has since fled London with his wife and four young children and is believed to be in Syria.
After the ruling, Choudary described the court hearing as “a nonsense” and claimed he had continued preaching online since his arrest. “It’s a nonsense anyway. I never stopped my dawah, I never stopped doing my work online and in cafes. Street dawah is just one way of doing this,” he said.
“It’s an abuse of process. It’s an abuse of what you would call human rights, they should remove the other conditions. I’ve been raided four or five times and they’ve never found anything – I’ve got less now than I had then.”
The men, who have not been charged, remain on police bail until 27 January.
