Edmonton man accused of extremist ties in U.Ok. makes court docket look; trial set for subsequent yr

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The Edmonton man accused by British authorities of being a member of an extremist group is scheduled to face trial subsequent yr.

Khaled Hussein made a short look in London’s Outdated Bailey courthouse Friday, weeks after he was charged with being a part of a corporation proscribed below the U.Ok.’s Terrorism Act.

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Hussein, 28, is charged alongside Anjem Choudary, an extremist preacher beforehand jailed for supporting ISIS.

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In response to the Night Commonplace newspaper, Choudary and Hussein appeared in court docket by video hyperlink and didn’t converse besides to verify their names and dates of start. Each had been arrested July 17, Hussein after arriving on a flight at London’s Heathrow Airport.

Choudary is jailed at a jail in northern England, whereas Hussein is detained in south London.

Justice Jeremy Baker set a plea listening to for Jan. 5 and a provisional trial at Kingston Crown Court docket for Could 20, 2024, the Night Commonplace reported.

Choudary, 56, is charged with three counts associated to his alleged help for Al-Muhajiroun, often known as the Islamic Thinkers Society, which he’s accused of directing and supporting throughout public talking engagements. The group is proscribed below the nation’s Terrorism Act, which features a checklist of teams alleged to commit, promote or encourage terrorism.

Additionally referred to as the Saved Sect and Al Ghurabaa, Al-Muhajiroun “seeks to ascertain an Islamic Caliphate dominated by Shariah regulation,” says the U.Ok. Residence Workplace, which listed the group in 2010.

Neither Al-Muhajiroun nor the Islamic Thinkers Society are included on Canada’s checklist of terrorist entities.

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The Center East Media Analysis Institute, a Washington, D.C.,-based media monitoring group, issued a report on a person it claims to be Hussein in 2021, calling him a “staunch” supporter of Al-Muhajiroun on social media.

The report stated a consumer who posted below the title Khaled Hussein and stated he lived in Edmonton often shared pro-jihadist content material on his Fb, Instagram and Twitter accounts. In a single video posted to Fb, the consumer celebrated the 2021 lifting of a court docket order banning Choudary from talking publicly following his launch on the ISIS-related fees.

Richard Robertson, a researcher with B’nai B’rith Canada, stated his group is “deeply troubled by the affiliation of Canadians with teams reminiscent of (Al-Muhajiroun).”

Robertson stated the group has repeatedly tried to evade scrutiny by altering names.

“They’re making an attempt to painting themselves as basically an Islamic charity, once they’ve been proscribed as a corporation linked to terrorism,” he stated.

John McCoy, government director of the Edmonton-based Group for the Prevention of Violence, didn’t touch upon the case instantly however stated there was “a persistent radicalizing community current in Edmonton.”

He stated Alberta produced a disproportionate variety of Canadian extremist travellers, the federal authorities’s time period for Canadians who travelled to the so-called Islamic State, which misplaced the final of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2019.

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