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6 charged with inciting terror in UK

April 30, 2007 09:49 IST

Six radical Muslims, including Abu Izzadeen who jeered at Home Secretary John Reid last September, were charged in Britain with inciting terrorism overseas and fundraising, police said on Monday.

Four of the six, including Izzadeen, were also charged with inciting terrorism overseas. They will appear in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates Court.

The six men were arrested this week in connection with allegedly inflammatory statements made at London's Regent's Park Mosque in November 2004.

Izzadeen, along with Shal Jalal Hussain, 24, Omar Zaheer, 27, Simon Keeler, 35, Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan, 21, and Rajib Khan, 28, are all charged with terrorist fundraising.

Izzadeen, Keeler, Hassan and Khan have also been charged with inciting others to commit acts of terrorism overseas.

In addition, Hassan is charged with possession of articles suspected to be connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of a terrorist act.

Izzadeen, a former electrician who lives in Leytonstone, east London, with his wife and three children, is best known for his barracking of Home Secretary John Reid last September.

A well known figure towards the extreme end of British Muslim opinion, convert Izzadeen repeatedly disrupted a speech by Reid in east London calling him 'an enemy of Islam' and 'a tyrant.'

Izzadeen is said to be a former spokesman for the radical Islamist group Al-Ghurabaa, an offshoot of the now disbanded Al-Muhajiroun led by radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, both of which are now banned in Britain.

He came to prominence for refusing to condemn the July 7, 2005 suicide bombings in London and has described Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush as the 'real terrorists' for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

H S Rao in London
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