Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has lodged an appeal against his life sentence, potentially costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees.
Firebrand Choudary, 57, who radicalised dozens of Islamist extremists, including soldier Lee Rigby’s killers, was jailed for at least 28 years in July for secretly running a banned terror group.
He was expected to die in prison but has lodged an appeal at the High Court to try to quash the sentence and conviction.
His latest legal battle could run through the Appeal Court, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights for years.
Last night Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert at Buckingham University, said: ‘This appeal is an appalling waste of taxpayer cash.
‘There is no doubt in anyone’s mind, be they a humble juror or a High Court judge, that Choudary is a highly dangerous fanatic and that this country should be protected from the venom he spews.’
Last night the Criminal Appeal Office within the High Court in London confirmed it had received Choudary’s appeal application.
Choudary, of Ilford, east London, was convicted of directing terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun (ALM), which was proscribed in 2006. Woolwich Crown Court heard he gave online lectures to the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS), the American branch of ALM, which was trying to recruit members across the US and Canada.
The court was told Choudary began to redevelop ITS across North America after being released from a five-and-a-half-year jail sentence for inviting support for Islamic State.
At his sentencing in the ITS case, Mr Justice Mark Wall said Choudary was ‘front and centre in running a terrorist organisation’.
Last night his grounds for appeal were not revealed. But his former bodyguard Abu Izzadeen, who was jailed for four-and a-half years for inciting terrorism in 2008, said Choudary believed his sentence ‘was astronomically high’.
Izzadeen, who was born Trevor Brooks, added: ‘I know people in prison who have done double murder and got less than that – 28 years minimum for something that is not murder.
They sentenced him based on his persona in the media.’ Choudary had been a leading member of ALM since it was founded in late 1990s.
Although the group officially disbanded in 2004, it survived secretly and adopted names such as the Saved Sect. He took charge of ALM from 2005 after its then leader Omar Bakri Muhammed fled the UK for his native Lebanon.
Trained lawyer Choudary is accused of radicalising a generation of terrorists through ALM, including Michael Adebolajo, 39, and Michael Adebowale, 33, who beheaded Fusilier Lee Rigby, 25, outside Woolwich Barracks in London in 2013.
Choudary also radicalised more than a dozen terrorists who went to Syria to join ISIS, including Siddhartha Dhar, 32, who filmed himself shooting a victim dead in a propaganda video in 2016.