Hate preacher Anjem Choudary might be released from jail this year (Picture: PA)

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary could be released from prison in a matter of months, it has emerged.

The convicted terrorist, 51, inspired around 100 British jihadists – including the London Bridge killer Khuram Butt – as he swore allegiance to Islamic State and promoted terror online.

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Choudary had built up a network of thousands of followers before he was jailed for five-and-a-half years in September 2016 for inviting people to join Isis.

But today it has emerged he is among 80 extremists jailed between 2007 and 2016 who could walk free this year — months or, in some cases, years early — due to prison rules.


If he is released, Choudary will have spent less than two and a half years in jail.

The dad was jailed back in September 2016 (Picture: PA Archive/PA Images)

Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace admitted it was a ‘concern’ so many so many convicted Islamist and far-right extremists were set to be freed (Photo: PA Wire/PA Images)

Security Minister Ben Wallace admitted it was a ‘concern’ so many convicted Islamist and far-right extremists were set to be freed within months.



He told BBC Radio 4: ‘It is a concern because what we are seeing nowadays is a large group of people who have effectively crossed the Rubicon to becoming radicalised, that is the mindset that they have now accepted or adapted.’

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The revelation comes just one day after the Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced the Government’s new counter-terrorism strategy.

Javid announced the new strategy includes plans for MI5 to share intelligence on suspected extremists with local police and councils in a bid to intervene at an early stage before an imminent violent attack.

He admitted more than 20,000 terrorist suspects still pose a threat and said the UK would have been hit by a terror attack every two months since 2013 without the work of the security services.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid unveiled the Government’s latest counter-terrorism strategy (Picture: TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS)

A total of 12 Islamist and four right-wing extremist plots were stopped in Britain since March 2017, Javid said.

Choudary, who is a father-of-five, is currently in a special ‘prison within a prison’ inside HMP Belmarsh in south-east London.

Butt was a known associate of Choudary before he, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, drove a van into crowds on London Bridge last year.

They were shot dead by police as they stabbed people at Borough Market.

Choudary’s other supporters included Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, and suspected ISIS executioner Siddhartha Dhar.

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