A court in London has convicted radical preacher Anjem Choudary of supporting the terrorist organisation ISIS. He may be given a ten year prison sentence according to what police said yesterday.

The Old Bailey in London said that Choudary, who is 49, and his assistant Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, 33, used lectures on the internet and letters to encourage support for the terrorist organisation which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria and is responsible for terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of people in Europe.

Choudary is described as a hate preacher in Britain, and he used to appear on television after every terrorist attack and blame western foreign policy for the attacks.

The head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command Commander Dean Haydon said: “These men have stayed just within the law for many years, but there is no one within the counter-terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations.” He added that “Over and over again we have seen people on trial for the most serious offences who have attended lectures or speeches given by these men. The oath of allegiance was a turning point for the police – at last we had the evidence that they had stepped over the line and we could prove they supported ISIS.”

The reputation of Choudary , the former leader of the Al-Muhajiroun group and Omar Bakri’s right hand man, was damaged after he paid tribute to the men who carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States and said that he wanted to turn Buckingham Palace into a mosque.